If you can throw your mind, as I can, as far back as 1914, you would be struck by some extraordinary differences in Wall Street then and today. In a great number of things, the improvement has been tremendous. The ethics of Wall Street are very much better. The sources of information are much greater, and the information itself is much more dependable. There have been many advances in the art of security analysis. In all those respects we are very far ahead of the past.

In one important respect we have made practically no progress at all, and that is in human nature. Regardless of all the apparatus and all the improvements in techniques, people still want to make money very fast. They still want to be on the right side of the market. And what is most important and most dangerous, we all want to get more out of Wall Street than we deserve for the work we put in. — Ben Graham (source)

As an investor, you have to deal with two risks: The risk of losing money, and the risk of missing out on opportunities. It’s the job of a good investor to balance the two… I think it’s better to turn cautious too soon rather than too late… It’s precisely when people can’t see what it is that could make things turn down that risk is the highest. It could be an economic slowdown, rising interest rates, the effect of central bank tightening, or geopolitical events. Or it could be “something else.” It’s always the things we don’t know about that really bite us in the end. — Howard Marks (source)

Stevenson, you remember, had a coward in his “Suicide Club” who threw dice with Death to enjoy the delights of fear, because when he escaped he tasted the intense joys of living. But he played once too often, did old Mr. Malthus. It is the same in stock gambling — the delightful uncertainty; the grim “now you see and now you don’t” of luck; the little chills of pleasure and the leaden sinking of disappointment; the exquisite expectancy — all this fires the blood of the young, as does love, and of the old, as love no longer can. The stock market “lambs” are like Mr. Malthus — when prices fluctuate they keenly enjoy the delight of riches because they have just jumped from the sorrow of nonpossession. But they too play once too often!

It may be accepted as axiomatically true that a man must possess a high degree of intelligence to be successful in commercial or professional pursuits. So must a Wall Street man, to win a fortune in the stock market and to keep it. But for an “outside” businessman to make a fortune in his vocation, and then to make another in the stock market, and keep both, requires positively the most extraordinary ability. Always on the wave of a general boom, outsiders come to Wall Street — and fail to display ordinary ability. They are ignorant of the basic principles of stock speculation. They are too late in going in and they overstay. They take unduly great risks. — Edwin Lefevre (source)