A comic strip published by a New York evening paper depicted, in the spring of 1946 at the height of the black market, the woeful experience of a lady who committed the blunder of opening a package she had purchased. The food in it was spoiled. Indignantly she rushed back to the store, “My dear lady,” exclaimed the clerk, “you opened the package? Good heavens! That’s not for eating. It’s for BUYING AND SELLING.”
So it is too with stocks. Many purchase them for selling, never looking inside. But if the market declines before they succeed in disposing of the package, the value of the contents suddenly acquires a new and decisive meaning.
- From the book Classics II: Another Investor's Anthology
When someone with experience proposes a deal to someone with money, too often the fellow with money ends up with the experience, and the fellow with experience ends up with the money.
-Warren Buffet in letters to the shareholders, 2006.
