Professional investment may be likened to those newspaper competitions in which the competitors have to pick out the six prettiest faces from a hundred photographs, the prize being awarded to the competitor whose choice most nearly corresponds to the average preferences of the competitors as a whole; so that each competitor has to pick, not those faces which he himself finds prettiest, but those which he thinks likeliest to catch the fancy of the other competitors, all of whom are looking at the problem from the same point of view. It is not a case of choosing those which, to the best of one's judgement, are really the prettiest, nor even those which average opinion genuinely thinks the prettiest. We have reached the third degree where we devote our intelligences to anticipating what the average opinion expects the average opinion to be. And there are some, I believe, who practice the fourth, fifth and higher degrees.
John Maynard Keynes in The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936)Nobody on Wall Street has a monopoly on truth. Market strategists don't. Money managers and investment-newsletter writers don't. Brokers, financial planners and insurance agents don't. Newpaper columnists don't. So treat all financial advice with caution. Look at every investment and every investment strategy with profound skepticism. Think long and hard about every financial myth. If you do that, you will do just fine.
Jonathon Clements in 25 Myths You've Got to Avoid if you Want to Manage Your Money Right
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