July 17, 2025

Equities, yields, risks and opportunities

Trend-followers are enjoying the current rally in U.S. equity indices, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq continuing to grind higher, painting a picture of resilience. But beneath the index-level strength, individual stock trading remains erratic. Traders are grappling with choppy setups, navigating between punishing whipsaws

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To Speculate … Or To Invest?

December 20, 2022

Modern usage has made the term speculator a synonym for gambler and plunger. Actually, the word comes from the Latin ‘speculari’, which means to spy out, monitor, observe. I have defined a speculator as a man who observes the future and acts before it occurs.

The art of speculation consists of being able to accurately decipher and play the odds. Gambling is taking a risk when the odds are against you. Speculating is taking a risk when the odds are in your favor.

Successful investments are successful speculations because if you successfully anticipate the future you make a speculative profit.

A speculator is one who runs risks of which he is aware; an investor is one who runs risks of which he is unaware.

To anticipate the market is to gamble. To be patient and react only when the market gives the signal is to speculate.

I constantly suggest speculation rather than investment as the policy less apt to show a loss and more apt to show a profit.

Investors are the biggest gamblers of all. They make a bet, stay with it, and if it goes wrong, they lose it all. The money lost by speculation is small compared with the gigantic sums lost by so-called investors who have let their investments ride.

I regard conservative investors as pure gamblers. How can they not be if they stay with a stock even if it continues to drop?

Speculation presupposes intellectual effort; gambling, blind chance.

Speculation involves the use of intelligent foresight. Most people use neither foresight nor intelligence.

Gambling means betting on an outcome over which the gambler has no control or foreknowledge. Speculation means taking a calculated risk on an intelligent estimate of future possibilities.

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