The Psychology of Money: Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed, and Happiness

"When you see someone driving a nice car, you rarely think, “Wow, the guy driving that car is cool.” Instead, you think, “Wow, if I had that car people would think I’m cool.”"

"Ask yourself: How much should you pay for Google stock today? The answer depends on who “you” are. Do you have a 30-year time horizon? Then the smart price to pay involves a sober analysis of Google’s discounted cash flows over the next 30 years. Are you looking to cash out within 10 years? Then the price to pay can be figured out by an analysis of the tech industry’s potential over the next decade and whether Google management can execute on its vision. Are you looking to sell within a year? Then pay attention to Google’s current product sales cycles and whether we’ll have a bear market. Are you a day trader? Then the smart price to pay is “who cares?” because you’re just trying to squeeze a few bucks out of whatever happens between now and lunchtime, which can be accomplished at any price."

"Benjamin Graham is known as one of the greatest investors of all time, the father of value investing and the early mentor of Warren Buffett. But the majority of Benjamin Graham’s investing success was due to owning an enormous chunk of GEICO stock which, by his own admission, broke nearly every diversification rule that Graham himself laid out in his famous texts. Where does the thin line between bold and reckless fall here? I don’t know. Graham wrote about his GEICO bonanza: “One lucky break, or one supremely shrewd decision—can we tell them apart?” Not easily. We"

"An interesting quirk of investing history is that the further back you look, the more likely you are to be examining a world that no longer applies to today. Many investors and economists take comfort in knowing their forecasts are backed up by decades, even centuries, of data. But since economies evolve, recent history is often the best guide to the future, because it’s more likely to include important conditions that are relevant to the future."

"Psychologists call it reactance. Jonah Berger, a marketing professor at the University of Pennsylvania, summed it up well: People like to feel like they’re in control—in the drivers’ seat. When we try to get them to do something, they feel disempowered. Rather than feeling like they made the choice, they feel like we made it for them. So they say no or do something else, even when they might have originally been happy to go along.25"

"What matters is that a blackjack card counter knows they are playing a game of odds, not certainties. In any particular hand they think they have a good chance of being right, but know there’s a decent chance they’re wrong. It might sound strange given their profession, but their strategy relies entirely on humility—humility that they don’t know, and cannot know exactly what’s going to happen next, so play their hand accordingly."

"The big takeaway from ice ages is that you don’t need tremendous force to create tremendous results. If something compounds—if a little growth serves as the fuel for future growth—a small starting base can lead to results so extraordinary they seem to defy logic. It can be so logic-defying that you underestimate what’s possible, where growth comes from, and what it can lead to. And so it is with money."