"There are, I believe, five factors that help explain why security analysts have such difficulty in predicting the future. These are the influence of random events, the production of dubious reported earnings through “creative” accounting procedures, errors made by the analysts themselves, the loss of the best analysts to the sales desk or to portfolio management, and the conflicts of interest facing securities analysts at firms with large investment banking operations. Each factor deserves some discussion."

“A random walk is one in which future steps or directions cannot be predicted on the basis of past history. When the term is applied to the stock market, it means that short-run changes in stock prices are unpredictable. Investment advisory services, earnings forecasts, and chart patterns are useless. On Wall Street, the term “random walk” is an obscenity. It is an epithet coined by the academic world and hurled insultingly at the professional soothsayers. Taken to its logical extreme, it means that a blindfolded monkey throwing darts at the stock listings could select a portfolio that would do as well as one selected by the experts.”

“Determining clear goals is a part of the investment process that too many people skip, with disastrous results. You must decide at the outset what degree of risk you are willing to assume and what kinds of investments are most suitable to your tax bracket. The securities markets are like a large restaurant with a variety of menu choices suitable for different tastes and needs. Just as there is no one food that is best for everyone, so there is no one investment that is best for all investors.”

“As I’ve already pointed out, some ready assets are necessary for pending expenses, such as college tuition, possible emergencies, or even psychological support. Thus, you have a real dilemma. You know that if you keep your money in a savings bank and get, say, 2 percent interest in a year in which the inflation rate exceeds 2 percent, you will lose real purchasing power. In fact, the situation is even worse because the interest you get is subject to regular income taxes. Moreover, short-term interest rates were abnormally low during the 2010s. So what’s a small saver to do? There are several short-term investments that are likely to help provide the best rate of return, although no very good alternatives exist when interest rates are very low.”

“Investors should certainly be aware of new methods of portfolio construction. And high net worth investors might consider adding a multifactor smart beta offering or a risk-parity portfolio to the overall mix of their investments. Factor investing can potentially increase returns at the cost of assuming a somewhat different set of risk exposures than those of a standard broad-based index fund. And investors who are able to accept the added risks inherent in leverage might profitably add a risk-parity portfolio to their set of investments. Such offerings should only be considered, however, if they are low cost and if their potentially adverse tax effects can be offset in other parts of the overall portfolio. And I continue to believe that a broad-based total stock market index fund should be the core of everyone’s portfolio. Certainly, for investors who are starting to build an equity portfolio in planning for retirement, standard capitalization-weighted index funds are the appropriate first investments they should make.”

“Part of the genius of financial markets is that when there is a real demand for a method to enhance speculative opportunities, the market will surely provide it. The instruments that enabled tulip speculators to get the most action for their money were “call options” similar to those popular today in the stock market.”

“Technology will ultimately greatly improve the intentional payments system. And there will always be advantages to holding an asset that is anonymous and transportable without a physical trace. But the lessons of history are immutable. Speculative bubbles will persist. But they ultimately lead most of their participants to financial ruin. Even real technology revolutions do not guarantee benefits for investors.”