I’ve recently developed a kind of fetish for business books written in the early nineties. Not only do they read like prose, but also because there views are slow and definite and not mere rants. Money Game by Adam Smith is an immensely enjoyable read. Get your hands on one.

  1. Many shall come to honour that now are fallen, and many shall fall that are now in honour. – Horace
  2. YOU-IDENTITY-ANXIETY-MONEY
  3. Those who leave early may be saved, but the music and wines are so seductive that we do not want to leave, but we do ask, “What time is it? What time is ? Only none of the clocks have any hands.”
  4. Professional investors are deemed to be smarter because they can churn out ratios at the touch of a button compared to the small investor. They are in fact, not smarter, they merely have more information.
  5. When high IQ meets with high EQ, more and more money percolates to fewer hands.
  6. If you do not know who you are, the market is a terribly expensive place to find out.
  7. Enjoy the stories people tell you, they always teach more than the rules.
  8. When J.P. Morgan asked what the market would do, he simply said,” it will fluctuate.”
  9. One of the most difficult tasks men can perform, however much others may despise it, is the invention of good games, and it cannot be done by men out of touch with their instinctive selves.
  10. There is nothing so disastrous as a rational policy in an irrational world.
  11. THE WORLD IS NOT THE WAY THEY TELL YOU IT IS.
  12. Image>Reality>Identity>Anxiety>Money
  13. The game of professional investment is intolerably boring and over-exacting to anyone who is entirely exempt from the gambling instinct; whilst he who has it must pay to this propensity the appropriate toll.
  14. Eighty percent of the investors are not really out there to make money.
  15. It is an exercise in mass psychology, in trying to guess better than the crowd, how the crowd will behave.
  16. If you are as successful Game player, it can be fascinating, consuming, totally absorbing experience, in fact, it has to be. If it is not totally absorbing, you are not likely to be among the most successful, because you are competing with those who do find it so absorbing.
  17. No man is so harmlessly occupied as when he is making money.
  18. As in driving, there will always be personal intuition in investing.
  19. The market, is like a beautiful woman – endlessly fascinating, endlessly complex, always changing, always mystifying. I have been absorbed in it and I know this is no science, it is an art.
  20. The market is too complex for Zen.
  21. What is it that great investors have ? It’s a kind of locked-in concentration, an intuition, a feel, nothing that can be schooled. Therefore the first thing that you have to know is yourself.
  22. YOU-IDENTITY-ANXIETY-MONEY
  23. It may seem silly to think that the portfolio of stocks can give you the portrait of the man who picked them, but any tuned-in-stock-picker will swear to it.
  24. There is a good amount of personality difference between the people who are good at finding stocks and the people who call the shots on the timing and manage the whole portfolio.
  25. The investor who manages his own money has huge tolerance for detail, the aggressive fund manager can barely stand it.
  26. Great analysts generally have a high aptitude with both words and numbers.
  27. Small investors generally are the ones to have great reaction with very little knowledge.
  28. Your emotions must support the goal you are after. You must operate without anxiety.
  29. The real test is how you behave when the crowd is roaring the other way.
  30. The mind of the crowd is not an average, but the Lowest Common Denominator.
  31. An individual, upon becoming a member of a crowd, descends several rungs in order of civilization, because he suddenly experiences a sentiment of invincible power which allows him to yield to his instincts, which had he been alone, would have kept under restraint….the sentiment of responsibility which usually controls individuals disappears entirely.
  32. If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, maybe you just haven’t heard the news.
  33. 80% of the market game is psychology.
  34. At the root of the impulse to pile up this useless money is the compulsion to work.- Norman Brown
  35. Most people want to stay in the game simply to know “whats going on” rather than to make money. Like following cricket.
  36. The objective of investment is serenity, and serenity can only be achieved without anxiety, and to avoid anxiety you need to know who you are and what you are doing.
  37. The stock does not know that you own it.
  38. The markets have a way of inducing humility even in its most successful student.
  39. Money, contrary to the popular myth, does help people more than it spoils them, simply because it open up more options.
  40. LIVE BIG OR SMALL, JUST GET OUT OF THE MIDDLE.
  41. You have to go for Quantum Jumps.
  42. Study philosophy and more importantly LOGIC.
  43. If a decision is made not to make a decision, that is just as much a decision as a decision which initiates action.
  44. In the long run, we are all dead.
  45. Sweet are the uses of diversity, but only if you want to end up in the middle of an average.
  46. The Game that most women play is, MEN.
  47. The safest way to preserve capital is to double it.
  48. The name of the game is making money, not sitting on it.
  49. To be a good investor, you have to be a good brain picker and brain pickers are usually good for a dinner conversation.
  50. It is a part of the ethos of humanity that you ought to be rich. You ought to be, unless you have taken some specific view of poverty such as priesthood, scholarship, teaching, or civil service, because money is the way we keep score.

http://www.amazon.in/Money-Game-Adam-Smith/dp/0394721039/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1430220094&sr=1-1&keywords=the+money+game

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