If you want your business to survive for 100 years, you've got to make it through every single day for 100 years. It's not enough to do it 99.9% of the time.
The big question about how people behave is whether they've got an Inner Scorecard or an Outer Scorecard. It helps if you can be satisfied with an Inner Scorecard.
The commission of the investment sins listed above is not limited to 'the little guy.' Huge institutional investors, viewed as a group, have long underperformed the unsophisticated index-fund investor who simply sits tight for decades. A major reason has been fees: Many institutions pay substantial sums to consultants who, in turn, recommend high-fee managers. And that is a fool's game.
I am not in the business of predicting general stock market of business fluctuations. If you think I can do this, or think it is essential to an investment program, you should not be in the partnership.
Every day that goes by, I mean, if you don't react to Pearl Harbor for a week or two weeks or three weeks, you're behind in the war that you otherwise would have fought.