Fortune cookie on taking risks

You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don't try.

~ fortune cookie

Jim Rogers on youth, experience and bubbles

… that is what happens in bubbles.  The price goes up because the price is going up. In one sense, what you want in a bull market is a kid who is too young to know that what he is doing is foolish.  You want a kid who will race into a bubble and leverage it higher and higher.  Guys like me will not make nearly so much money because we see what is going on.  The kid does not know why he is making money, which is why he is making so much money.  The rest of us are experienced enough or smart enough to know that this is going to end badly.  What you want is a kid with very little experience and just enough brains to be very dangerous.  But you need to be smart enough to know when to pull out, to save yourself from his lack of knowledge and experience, and that, of course, can be hard to do.  When things go bad, you certainly do not want that kid around— and the kid is probably not going to be around by then anyway.

~ Jim Rogers, Street Smarts: Adventures on the Road and in the Markets

Dale Carnegie on risk taking

The person who goes farthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare.  The sure-thing boat never gets far from shore.

~ Dale Carnegie

Howard Marks on risk taking

There are old investors and there are bold investors, but there are no old bold investors.

~ Howard Marks

Randall Forsyth on investing and risk taking

It has been observed that there are bold pilots, and there are old pilots, but there aren't any old, bold pilots.  The same may be said for investors.

~ Randall W. Forsyth, "Up & Down Wall Street," Barron's, October 23, 2021

Charlie Munger on the balance between competency and gumption

You have to strike the right balance between competency or knowledge on the one hand and gumption on the other. Too much competency and no gumption is no good.  And if you don't know your circle of competence, then too much gumption will get you killed.  But the more you know the limits to your knowledge, the more valuable gumption is.

~ Charlie Munger

(As quoted by Jason Zweig, "A Fireside Chat With Charlie Munger," The Wall Street Journal, September 12, 2014

George Bernard Shaw on mistakes

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.

~ George Bernard Shaw

Kevin Duffy on compulsive gambling and the everything bubble

Compulsive gambling is a progressive disease.  The parabolic pattern of a bubble mirrors the willingness to take on risk.  Last week, former darlings like Amazon and Tesla sold off as they lack the sheer adrenaline rush of pumping up the stocks of dying companies and taking down billion dollar hedge funds.  (We witnessed a similar phenomenon in 2000 when “Old Economy” stalwarts were dumped for dot-com lottery tickets.)   Lately, speculators have gone from picking up quarters in front of a steamroller to dodging Ferraris for pennies.

~ Kevin Duffy, "Game Over," LewRockwell.com, February 1, 2021

JIm Grant: "Life is a matter of tradeoffs"

Life is a matter of tradeoffs. And early on people would plague you if you held this view in public by saying, “You mean to tell me that you are willing to trade off profits for human lives?”  Well no, I’m willing to trade off risks, and it’s what we all do whether we realize or not, whether we can express this or not.  We are all, at least subconsciously, living according to our tolerance for risk.  We look both ways or no, we don’t look both ways.  We scrupulously observe 55 miles an hour or we are young and quick and bold and drive 75 miles an hour and probably not run a risk to ourselves or others.   So people by and large – not exclusively and not entirely, but people by and large know these things about themselves.

~ Jim Grant, "Living Economic History: Q&A with Jim Grant," The Coffee Can Portfolio, December 9, 2020

Mark Twain on risk taking

Why not go out on a limb? That's where the fruit is!

~ Mark Twain

Babe Ruth on swinging for the fences

If I'd tried for them dinky singles I could've batted around six hundred.

~ Babe Ruth

Charles Lindbergh on risk taking

Life without risks is not worth taking.

~ Charles Lindbergh

Lindbergh - "Spirit of St. Louis"
May 26, 1928

Jerome Powell warns about the risks of creating asset bubbles

I think we are actually at a point of encouraging risk-taking, and that should give us pause.

~ Jerome Powell, October 2012 FOMC meeting

Robert Allen on risk taking

Everything you want is just outside your comfort zone.

~ Robert Allen, author and speaker

Pierre Corneille on winning

To win without risk is a triumph without glory.

~ Pierre Corneille, French playwrite

Ralph Waldo Emerson on conformity

A man must consider what a rich realm he abdicates when he becomes a conformist.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, essayist

Ralph Waldo Emerson
1940

Sara Blakely on failure

My dad encouraged us to fail.  Growing up, he would ask us what we failed at that week.  If we didn't have something, he would be disappointed. It changed my mindset at an early age that failure is not the outcome - failure is not trying.

~ Sara Blakely, founder of Spanx

Elbert Hubbard on risk

The greatest mistake you can make in life is to continually be afraid you will make one.

~ Elbert Hubbard, philosopher

Ludwig von Mises on progress and risk taking

Every step of progress is a change involving heavy risks.

~ Ludwig von Mises, Bureaucracy

Michael Aronstein on the reality of QE for savers and borrowers

In effect what the Fed is doing is guaranteeing that if you're a saver and desire safe assets you get no return. [Retirees] better have an awful lot of money if they want to live off of interest. So, it's forcing people, worldwide, to take risk, to take all kinds of risks that they're probably not all that comfortable taking and in effect it's a wealth transference from people who are natural creditors, people who have accumulated savings, to people who can use them, people who are natural borrowers.

~Michael Aronstein, president of Marketfield Asset Management, Bloomberg Television's "Surveillance Midday", November 9th, 2010