Foolish Special

[ October 24, 2000 ]

Top 5 Quotations from Where Are The Customers' Yachts?

Published in 1940, Where Are The Customers' Yachts? is one of the funniest and most piercingly accurate books ever to have been written about the stock market. Its author, Fred Schwed, Jr., had been a trader before, during and after the 1929 crash, and harboured no illusions about the frequently irrational behaviour of the market's participants.

These are our five gems from the book -- if you've read it, you'll no doubt have your own, and if you haven't -- why not?

"One can't say that figures lie. But figures, as used in financial arguments, seem to have the bad habit of expressing a small part of the truth forcibly, and neglecting the other part, as do some people we know."

"Before October, 1929, no one objected to short sellers except their own families. The families objected to going bankrupt."

"It is a curious and terrible thing, but for some reason it is easier for a man to raise a thousand dollars for a margin call than it is for him to raise the price of supper if he is starving."

On charting: "There have always been a considerable number of pathetic people who busy themselves examining the last thousand numbers which have appeared on a roulette wheel, in search of some repeating pattern. Sadly enough, they have usually found it."

And our favourite quotation from Where Are The Customers' Yachts?...

"'Wall Street', runs the sinister old gag, is a street with a river at one end and a graveyard at the other'. This is striking, but incomplete. It omits the kindergarten in the middle."

More Top 5 Lists

• Things to Remember About Dot Coms • Dot Com quotations from March 2000 • Reasons why England aren't very good at football • Profit warning signs

Where Next?

• Buy Where Are The Customers' Yachts? at the Fool Bookshop on Amazon.
• Talk about your own favourite investment books on the Books Foolish and Financial discussion board.