Financial Speculation Quotes

In the 1930s, there was a stretch where you could borrow more against the real estate than you could sell it for. I think that's what's going on in today's private-equity world.

There are two times in a man's life when he should not speculate [on the Stock Market]: when he can't afford it, and when he can.

Making an investment decision is like formulating a scientific hypothesis and submitting it to a practical test. The main difference is that the hypothesis that underlies an investment decision is intended to make money and not to establish a universally valid generalization.

Speculation is a parasite feeding upon values, creating none.

Irrational exuberance

Stock-picking is like gambling: those who win well, seldom bet, but when they do, they bet heavily.

To us, investing is the equivalent of going out and betting against the pari-mutuel system. We look for a horse with one chance in two of winning, and that pays three to one. In other words, we're looking for a mispriced gamble. That's what investing is, and you have to know enough to know whether the gamble is mispriced.

In every stockjobbing swindle every one knows that some time or other the crash must come, but every one hopes that it may fall on the head of his neighbor, after he himself has caught the shower of gold and placed it in safety.

The average American thinks billionaire investors are going to be right based on some talking head. They invest and they have no backup plan. Americans think these guys are giant risk-takers. The truth is they believe in taking as little risk as humanly possible, for the maximum amount of upside. They're looking for that spread of disproportionate risk-reward.

In engineering, people have a big margin of safety. But in the financial world, people don't give a damn about safety. They let it balloon and balloon and balloon. It's aided by false accounting.

The real problems of our economy began when the very smart people of our society went to Wall Street.

Another great evil arising from this desire to be thought rich; or rather, from the desire not to be thought poor, is the destructive thing which has been honored by the name of 'speculation'; but which ought to be called Gambling.

Capitalism has survived communism. Now, it eats away at itself.

Many hedge fund managers have become billionaires; perhaps this - plus their reputations as the smartest guys in the room - is why they have captured the investing public's imagination.

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.

In the public mind, an investment banker is no longer conservative; he's a risk taker, a gambler in high stakes, not to mention a thief. These people are dangerous - deliciously so.

Speculation is only a word covering the making of money out of the manipulation of prices, instead of supplying goods and services.

In an ideal world, one populated by vegetarians and Esperanto speakers, derivatives would be used for one thing only: reducing levels of risk. The list of individual traders who have lost more than a billion dollars at a time betting on derivatives is not short.

The national debt has given rise to joint stock companies, to dealings in negotiable effects of all kinds, and to agiotage , in a word to stock-exchange gambling and the modern bankocracy .

We see that hyperactivity and reward areas are important when the bubble's rising. People getting caught up in it. We also see areas involving mentalizing, which means thinking about other people: Who's buying? Who's selling? Do they know something? We see emotional areas before the crash that indicate a sense of uncertainty or dread.

The next time you hear some talking head opining on what we must do to satisfy the markets, ask yourself “How does he know?” For the truth is that when people talk about what markets demand, what they’re really doing is trying to bully us into doing what they themselves want.

Personally I don't think day traders are speculating, because traditional speculation requires some market knowledge. They are, instead, gambling, which doesn't.

But, as soon as speculators become an important influence in the market, their business is to speculate on each others behaviour.

Everybody knows that England is the world of betting men, who are of a higher class than mere gamblers: to bet is in the English temperament.

Until we apply terror to speculators --- shooting on the spot --- we won’t get anywhere.