Warren Buffett: "The stock market is a no-called-strike game"

The stock market is a no-called-strike game.  You don't have to swing at everything -- you can wait for your pitch.  The problem when you're a money manager is that your fans keep yelling, "Swing, you bum!"

~ Warren Buffett, 1999 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting, as quoted in The Tao of Warren Buffett by Mary Buffett and David Clark

MLB 2021 Home Run Derby

Warren Buffett on bubbles

But a pin lies in wait for every bubble.  And when the two eventually meet, a new wave of investors learns some very old lessons: First, many in Wall Street -- a community in which quality control is not prized -- will sell investors anything they will buy.  Second, speculation is most dangerous when it looks easiest.

~ Warren Buffett, 2000 Berkshire Hathaway Chairman's Letter

Warren Buffett on stock forecasters

We've long felt that the only value of stock forecasters is to make fortune tellers look good.  Even now, Charlie and I continue to believe that short-term market forecasts are poison and should be kept locked up in a safe place, away from children and also from grown-ups who behave in the market like children.

~ Warren Buffett, 1992 Berkshire Hathaway Chairman's Letter

Charlie Munger on success and failure

It's a good habit to trumpet your failures and be quiet about your successes.

~ Charlie Munger

Elon Musk on ESG

I am increasingly convinced that ESG is the Devil Incarnate.

~ Elon Musk, tweet, April 3, 2022

Jeff Deist on college education

Many students leave university with disastrously stupid worldviews - hostile to property, markets, free speech, family, and even civilization itself.  The whole cottage industry of "indentity  studies" is useless and destructive, by design.  These phony courses leave kids dispirited, depressed about the future, and ready to throw away centuries of received wisdom for a progressive blank slate.  Unwitting students graduate meaner, dumber, and older - with de facto degrees in narcissism ("I feel") and nihilism ("I hate").  Talk about opportunity cost!  Paraphrasing Mises, universities are gardens of socialism rather than exciting places for knowledge, ideas, and development.

~ Jeff Deist, Mises Institute fund raising letter, April 20, 2022

Kaushal "Ken" Majmudar on investing process vs. outcome

Most investors who are fooled by randomness focus too much on outcome (i.e. historical experience grounded in statistics) and too little on process.  By focusing on outcome over process, you tend to become overactive, undisciplined and a follower – looking and finding short-term patterns to which you attribute often false significance.  You constantly attempt to move to greener pastures but rarely arrive at your destination or stay to enjoy your surroundings.  In investing as in life, most people overestimate what can be accomplished in one year and vastly underestimate what can be accomplished in ten years.

~ Kaushal "Ken" Majmudar, founder of Ridgewood Investments, 2005 Annual Letter to Clients, March 7,  2006

Ludwig von Mises on Santa Claus economics

At the bottom of the interventionist argument there is always the idea that the government or the state is an entity outside and above the social process of production, that it owns something which is not derived from taxing its subjects, and that it can spend this mythical something for definite purposes.  This is the Santa Claus fable raised by Lord Keynes to the dignity of an economic doctrine and enthusiastically endorsed by all those who expect personal advantage from government spending. 

~ Ludwig von Mises, Human Action, p. 744

Anonymous employee on Disney's woke culture

I’ve been here for 35 years, and I only have a few years left before I can retire.  I’m trying to keep my sanity, but it’s very difficult.

~ anonymous employee, "Longtime Disney Cast Member Speaks Out: ‘We Are Ashamed to Work for This Company’," The Epoch Times, April 8, 2022

Ludwig von Mises on the paradox of "planning"

We may admit that in its initial period a socialist regime could to some extent rely upon the experience of the preceding age of capitalism.  But what is to be done later, as conditions change more and more?  Of what use could the prices of 1900 be for the director in 1949?  And what use can the director in 1980 derive from the knowledge of the prices of 1949?

The paradox of "planning" is that is cannot plan, because of the absence of economic calculation.  What is called a planned economy is no economy at all.  It is just a system of groping about in the dark.  There is no question of a rational choice of means for the best possible attainment of the ultimate ends sought.  What is called conscious planning is precisely the elimination of conscious purposive action.

~ Ludwig von Mises, Human Action, pp. 700-701

Alexis de Tocqueville on history

When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness.

~ Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Book Four, Chapter VIII

Ludwig von Mises on socialism

Socialism cannot be realized because it is beyond human power to establish it as a social system.  The choice is between capitalism and chaos.  The man who chooses between drinking a glass of milk and a glass of a solution of potassium cyanide does not choose between two beverages; he chooses between life and death.  A society that chooses between capitalism and socialism does not choose between two social systems; it chooses between social cooperation and the disintegration of society.  Socialism is not an alternative to capitalism; it is an alternative to any system under which men can live as human beings.  To stress this point is the task of economics as it is the task of biology and chemistry to teach that potassium cyanide is not a nutriment but a deadly poison. 

~ Ludwig von Mises, Human Action, p. 680

@tweettruth2me on feminism, LGBTQ, BLM and victimology

The feminist movement destroyed women and femininity.  Did you really believe the LGBTQ and the BLM movements weren’t going to do the same to it’s followers?  It’s a trap.  It’s always a trap.  Stop taking the victim bait.

~ @tweettruth2me, tweet, April 1, 2022