WW

Although I’ve been helping people with their investments for twenty-five years, I know there’s always going to be something new to learn so I regularly attend conventions and participate in asset manager’s conference calls. A few years ago, I was on a call hosted by Christopher Davis, a third generation money manager from the Boston area.

My previous newsletter kicked off the tour of our office wall which features quotations that I find helpful in various ways. We last heard from Peter Lynch, legendary manager of the Fidelity Magellan Fund. Next up is the current manager of Berkshire-Hathaway’s investment portfolio, Warren Buffett.

His contribution to our wall is “Investing is simple, but not easy”.

I’m turning to the Bard for the title of 2014’s first message because there are articles everywhere right now offering forecasts for the upcoming year. I never try that myself because I know I can’t predict the future. Instead, I thought I’d reflect a bit on the past to see what lessons we might learn.

Fortune magazine recently published an excerpt from a new Bernie Madoff book.

Growing up in Indianapolis, I knew very little about what went on outside the city limits and absolutely nothing about farming. When I worked as a stock broker in Logansport, though, I had several farmers as customers and began to learn about their lives. To a person, they loved the land.

Many things have changed since I was a little boy. Back when the post-war generation was raising children, my dad worked a full day downtown but my mom taught school and arrived home about the same time my sister and I did. You may be surprised to learn that I was not a perfect child and I sometimes needed to be reminded of that fact.

Some stories are just so good that they bear repeating even if the supposed teller may not actually have said it.