Stock market corrections, although painful at the time, are actually a very healthy part of the whole mechanism, because there are always speculative excesses that develop, particularly during the long bull market. ↗
I think those who invest in mutual funds want someone else to do the thinking for them. But the fact that they can move the money around the family of mutual funds just through a phone call lets them feel that they can play tycoons. ↗
I'm dubious about having Social Security put into the stock market. I think that we have gotten very far away from the idea that there's something sacrosanct about retirement investments. ↗
In the 1920s, Wall Street was a world that was really dominated by professional speculators and stock pools. These people had a monopoly over information. ↗
One of the very nice things about investing in the stock market is that you learn about all different aspects of the economy. It's your window into a very large world. ↗
Partly because his life ended before the age of 50, Hamilton was defined by the other founding fathers, and he managed, with amazing consistency, to alienate most of them. ↗
The Great Inflation of the 1970s destroyed faith in paper assets, because if you held a bond, suddenly the bond was worth much less money than it was before. ↗