Barry Ritholtz Quotes

"The simple reality of life is that everyone is wrong on a regular basis. By confronting these inevitable errors, you allow yourself to make corrections before it is too late."

"Little white lies are told by humans all the time. Indeed, lying is often how we get through each day in a happy little bubble. We spend time and energy rationalizing our own behaviors, beliefs and decision-making processes."

"You can blow on the dice all you want, but whether they come up 'seven' is still a function of random luck."

"When it comes to investing, you are your own worst enemy."

"When it comes to investing, there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all portfolio."

"Much of the traditional thinking about cash is well intentioned but unrealistic. Should you have six months of living expenses in the bank for emergencies? Sure. Do you? Probably not."

"Indeed, eventually, random outcomes all revert to the mean, meaning that streaks eventually end. Understanding this is a key part of intelligent and rational investing."

"Never forget this simple truism: Forecasting is marketing, plain and simple."

"Narrative drives most of economics. Everything seems to be part of a story, and how that story is told often leads to critical error."

"The beauty of diversification is it's about as close as you can get to a free lunch in investing."

"Hedge fund managers charge so much more than mutual fund managers; alpha is even harder to come by. They end up selling a variety of things beyond mere outperformance."

"There is a shortage of doctors, and the American Medical Association is aiming to keep it that way."

"Whenever I see a forecast written out to two decimal places, I cannot help but wonder if there is a misunderstanding of the limitations of the data, and an illusion of precision."

"You want less of the annoying nonsense that interferes with your portfolios and more of the significant data that allow you to become a less distracted, more purposeful investor."

"Investing is about making probabilistic decisions with limited information about an unknowable future. The variables are well known, as are the possible outcomes."

"To know whether stocks are cheap or pricey, we typically look at price-to-earnings ratio. Valuation is a tougher question than many folks realize."

"We must recognize our own behavioral errors. To be blunt, you are not likely to become a cognitive Zen master anytime soon. But a little enlightenment could keep you from making some common investing errors."

"TV producers want ratings and are willing to do nearly anything to get them. They gin up artificial conflicts and create an urgency for even the most minor of economic data points."

"Once you research an idea, you begin to develop a perspective. Writing about anything in public, often in real time, has helped fashion my views."

"The consumption and production of energy is a major component of the global economy."

"How are the cabs in your city? In Manhattan, where I work, they are rather awful."

"In New York, the former lack of real competition allowed taxis to extract excessive charges, regardless of the poor service."

"The way we finance homes in this country is slow, filled with middlemen, who run a nonstandardized evaluation process. This makes financing a home cumbersome and difficult."

"History shows us that people are terrible about guessing what is going to happen - next week, next month, and especially next year."

"Have a well-thought financial plan that is not dependent upon correctly guessing what will happen in the future."

"The ability to select stocks, manage them over time and know when to sell them is incredibly difficult, even for professional fund managers."

"Commissions add up, taxes are a big drag, margin ain't cheap. A good accountant costs money as well. The math on this one is obvious, yet investors often fail to recognize it: Keep your costs low and your turnover lower, and you will win in the end."

"No one knows what the top-performing asset class will be next year. Lacking this prescience, your next-best solution is to own all of the classes and rebalance regularly."

"People who work in specialized fields seem to have their own language. Practitioners develop a shorthand to communicate among themselves. The jargon can almost sound like a foreign language."

"Based on a lifetime of observations and a few decades in the markets, I understand that societies, beliefs and fashions all move in long arcs of time. We call these arcs several things: cycles, periods, eras."