Mark Twain lost a couple of fortunes through bad investments, which probably explains the pungency of his comments about investing.
Such as: “There are two times in a man’s life when he should not speculate: when he can’t afford it and when he can.”
I’ve always thought investors should keep in mind another Twain observation: “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”
Just a few years ago, legions of borrowers and investors and lenders knew “for sure” that there was no way U.S. housing prices could fall much, if at all. We know how that turned out. Sometimes, the things we know for sure actually are true, but the conclusions we draw from these facts are what “just ain’t so.”
