Me and Warren Buffett

Five things in common?

1. I never attempt to make money on the stock market. I buy on the assumption that they could close the market the next day and not reopen it for five years.

2. It's far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price.

3. Our favorite holding period is forever.

4. We believe that according the name 'investors' to institutions that trade actively is like calling someone who repeatedly engages in one-night stands a 'romantic.'

5. Wide diversification is only required when investors do not understand what they are doing.

Those are genuine quotes from the investing legend. I should have diversified more widely.

Bear Stearns

I'm not really one for nominative determinism, more for pointless puns. But I couldn't help but think that the name Bear Stearns was a delicious candidate to be the first bank on Wall Street to feel the crunch. After all, the definition of bear from the American Heritage Dictionary:

One, such as an investor, that sells securities or commodities in expectation of falling prices.
A pessimist, especially regarding business conditions.

It's maybe not the ideal sounding name for a company in which you would want to invest your savings.

Unlike bear, the word stearn is not in my dictionary. The closest match is probably stern. I'll just quote in its entirety the third of three definitions of this noun from Wordnet, not because it's relevant, just because it's funny:

the fleshy part of the human body that you sit on; "he deserves a good kick in the butt"; "are you going to sit on your fanny and do nothing?" [syn: buttocks]

The bare sterns did get a good kicking.