Morgan Housel Quotes Page 2

“The market is rational but investors play different games and those games look irrational to people playing a different game.”

“The more you learn about the economy, the more you realize you have no idea what's going on.”

“The most important finance topics don't require details. Most can be, and should be, summarized in a sentence or two.”

“The most powerful way to grow your money is learning to live with less, since you have complete control over it.”

“The problem with economic forecasting is that the things you can predict tend to not matter and the things you can't predict make all the difference in the world.”

“There is, and always will be, more money to be made providing investment advice than receiving it.”

“There's a strong negative correlation between flaunting money and being rich.”

“When in doubt, choose the investment with the lowest fee.”

“You can probably afford not to be a great investor -- you probably can't afford to be a bad one.”

“You have a strict obligation to not have an opinion about things you don't understand.”

“You have no obligation to have an opinion about anything.”

“You shouldn't feel strongly about any investment you haven't spent at least a week thinking about.”

“You're twice as biased as you think you are (four times if you disagree with that statement).”

“You're twice as gullible as you think you are.”

“Your circle of competence is probably 90% smaller than you think it is.”

“Your devotion to a political party or economic philosophy is directly proportional to your tendency to think irrationally about how politics affects your investments.”

“A barbelled personality—optimistic about the future, but paranoid about what will prevent you from getting to the future—is vital.”

“A good rule of thumb for a lot of things in life is that everything that can break will eventually break. So if many things rely on one thing working, and that thing breaks, you are counting the days to catastrophe. That’s a single point of failure.”

“Aligning money towards a life that lets you do what you want, when you want, with who you want, where you want, for as long as you want, has incredible return.”

“An underpinning of psychology is that people are poor forecasters of their future selves.”

“Beware taking financial cues from people playing a different game than you are.”

“Bubbles form when the momentum of short-term returns attracts enough money that the makeup of investors shifts from mostly long term to mostly short term.”

“Building wealth has little to do with your income or investment returns, and lots to do with your savings rate.”

“Control over doing what you want, when you want to, with the people you want to, is the broadest lifestyle variable that makes people happy.”

“Define the cost of success and be ready to pay for it. Because nothing worthwhile is free.”

“Enough is not too little … Enough is realizing that the opposite — an insatiable appetite for more — will push you to the point of regret.”

“Everything has a price, but not all prices appear on labels.”

“Getting money requires taking risks, being optimistic, and putting yourself out there. But keeping money requires the opposite of taking risk.

It requires humility, and fear that what you’ve made can be taken away from you just as fast. It requires frugality and an acceptance that at least some of what you’ve made is attributable to luck, so past success can’t be relied upon to repeat indefinitely.”

“Good investing is not necessarily about making good decisions. It’s about consistently not screwing up.”

“Having more control over your time and options is becoming one of the most valuable currencies in the world.”