Quote for the Week

The most important inheritance from the 1930s was simply the memory of it. The habits of mind developed during the terrible experiences of those years kept our business leaders from throwing caution to the winds and from forgetting the realities of risk. A good ten years had to pass before capital spending really took off, and it then languished again soon after the boom topped out in 1957…

Although I just turned 50 in 1969, I was already an old man in the financial community. Similar trends were apparent in the corporate world as well, as leadership was beginning to pass to a generation for whom the Great Depression was something they had only read about in the history books, rather than a real experience. This naturally led to much more carefree attitudes toward risk. Indeed, the new breed were convinced that it was they who were moving the world, they who knew all the answers, they who were masters of the fate of all of us, when in fact the absolutely necessary precondition for their achievements was the sense of caution and care that the older generation had carried forward from the depression era.

This is where this whole long story should drive itself home: the high profits that were the consequence of the caution and conservatism of the past were leading inexorably to overbuilding of capacity, excessive risk-taking, and burgeoning debt leverage. Just when we thought we were masters of our fate, we were preparing a fate much different from what we felt certain lay ahead…

The euphoria of these businessmen was ultimately the cause of its own demise. — Peter Bernstein (source)

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At the end of every year, I do a quick review of the blog and highlight the “best of” in case you missed something.

This year, the blog added:

• 73 new blog posts. The most popular are below.
• 8 new book notes (reading took a hit this year). Brings the total notes to 104 books.
• 40 new quotes. There are now 1,211 finance-related quotes collected and sourced. Philip Fisher quotes were the most popular by author. The most popular quote topic was risk management.
• 67 new pieces were added in the Library.
• 59 extended quotes from those pieces added to the Notebook. Brings the total to 1,446 available to members.

When I started this sixteen years ago, I never expected to do it this long. Thank you for reading and share! I’m grateful for you, the readers, for keeping me plugging along even when some of the writing falls flat. The biggest takeaway over the years is I never know what will resonate. It’s always a surprise to see what others find interesting.

This year’s “best of” list include an historical dive into editorial cartoons on tariffs, learning the wrong lessons in bull markets, why you should be more like a casino as an investor, and Charley Ellis applying lessons from golf to investing.

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Quote for the Week

Despite its irrational aspects, the internet boom was more than a matter of inflated valuations. The optimism of the financial markets not only changed the “fundamentals” of individual businesses, it had real and profound effects throughout the whole economy. The boom did not only follow from the development of the internet; it accelerated that development and contributed to the speed and extension of technological innovation. The same was true in telecommunications, where the boom also accelerated the spread of new technology.

The internet bust, when it finally came, was caused not by an unsound business model, but by over-extension of credit. The present slowdown is affecting the fundamentals of individual companies almost as much as their stock prices; it also affects the financial system and macroeconomic performance.

Instead of a one-way connection in which financial markets discount the future more or less accurately, there exists a two-way connection in which financial markets shape the future they are supposed to discount. Instead of a single outcome, there is a range of possibilities. Which of those possibilities materializes depends not only on the future evolution of the so-called fundamentals but on financial market behavior as well.

In these circumstances, it is irrational for market participants to base their decisions solely on their expectations about fundamentals because the fundamentals do not determine market prices; on the contrary, they are shaped by market conditions. So what matters to market participants is the future course of market prices, not the fundamentals they are said to reflect. If market prices deviate from a theoretical equilibrium there can be no assurance that they will ever return to it. — George Soros (source)

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Markets in 2025 started with a tariff tantrum that recovered and rallied the rest of the year. International markets shrugged off the tantrum quicker, rallied, and outpaced the US by a wide margin.

In addition, there was an AI Bubble, comparisons to the Dotcom Bubble, the return of SPACs, Bitcoin holding companies, private market funds for the masses, single stock levered ETFs, and more. A smorgasbord of speculative investments was introduced this year. Not unlike in 2020 and 2021. It didn’t turn out well then (It was brutal). Will this time be different? Time will tell.

With that, let’s get to the charts. Here’s how things started.

And how it’s ending.

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Quotes for the Week

Before I came down to Wall Street in 1914 the future of the stock market had already been forecast — once for all — in the famous dictum of J.P. Morgan the elder: “It will fluctuate.” It is a safe prediction for me to make that, in future years as in the past, common stocks will advance too far and decline too far, and that investors, like speculators — and institutions, like individuals — will have their periods of enchantment and disenchantment with equities. — Ben Graham (source)

When disagreement and controversy exist, prices move slowly because buyers and sellers roughly offset each other. When, on the other hand, a consensus exists, prices move rapidly, because buyers can find no one to buy at current levels (and vice versa with sellers on the way down). — Peter Bernstein (source)

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