A plaque remaining from the Big Apple Night Club at West 135th Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem.

Above, a 1934 plaque from the Big Apple Night Club at West 135th Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem. Discarded as trash in 2006. Now a Popeyes fast food restaurant on Google Maps.

Recent entries:
“Don’t use a big word when a singularly unloquacious and diminutive linguistic expression…” (3/18)
“Why does it take me 452 snacks to realize that I just need to eat dinner?” (3/18)
“You have to hand it to Subway for convincing us it’s acceptable to eat an entire loaf of bread for lunch” (3/18)
“At some point, Subway convinced us all it’s healthy to eat a whole loaf of bread in one sitting” (3/18)
“Just gone online for a video conference call. A can of corned beef popped up on my screen. Must be a zoom meat tin” (3/18)
More new entries...

A  B  C  D  E  F  G  H  I  J  K  L  M  N  O  P  Q  R  S  T  U  V  W  X  Y  Z


Entry from January 09, 2011
“If you don’t know who you are, the stock market is an expensive place to find out”

“If you don’t know who you are, this (the stock market or Wall Street) is an expensive place to find out” wrote “Adam Smith” (George Goodman) in his bestselling book, The Money Game (1968). Smith called this his “first Irregular Rule.” Mistakes on Wall Street can be expensive; it’s not the place for a person who doesn’t know himself or herself and seeks learning experiences.
 
Adam Smith’s rule is still widely cited, usually as “If you don’t know who you are, the stock market is an expensive place to find out.”
 
 
Wikipedia: George Goodman
George Jerome Waldo Goodman (August 10, 1930 —), is an American economist, author, and broadcast economics commentator, best known by his pseudonym Adam Smith (which intentionally evokes the 18th century Scottish economist of the same name). He also writes fiction under the name “George Goodman.”
 
Background, education, and career
Goodman was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the son of Alexander Mark Goodman and Viona Cremer Goodman. He received a scholarship to Harvard University, where he also served as the editor of The Harvard Crimson. Goodman furthered his education by attending Oxford where he was a Rhodes Scholar studying political economy.
 
His personal style of presenting economic facts and data has been described as that of “a witty, urbane dinner guest, a droll observer of human affairs,” rather than a stodgy economics professor. In fact, Goodman pioneered a style of financial writing that made the language and concepts of Wall Street more understandable and accessible to the typical investor.
 
Goodman’s first non-fiction book, The Money Game (1968), was a number one bestseller for over a year and changed the style of financial writing from that point forward.
     
Google Books
The Money Game
By Adam Smith
New York, NY: Random House
1968
Pg. 26:
That is one of the cryptograms which are my own, and this is the first Irregular Rule: If you don’t know who you are, this is an expensive place to find out.
Pg. 41:
There is one requirement that is absolute in money managing, and you have already learned it with the first Irregular Rule: If you don’t know who you are, this is an expensive place to find out.
       
Google Books
Minds, Markets, and Money:
Psychological foundations of economic behavior

By Shlomo Maital
New York, NY: Basic Books
1982
Pg. 229:
As George Goodman once said, “if you don’t know who you are, the stock market is an expensive place to find out.”
 
Google Books
The Book of Investing Wisdom:
Classic writings by great stock-pickers and legends of Wall Street

By Peter Krass
New York, NY: Wiley
1999
Pg. 86:
There is one requirement that is absolute in money managing, and you have already learned it with the first Irregular Rule: If you don’t know who you are, this is an expensive place to find out.
   
Google Books
The Collapse of the Dollar and How to Profit from It:
Make a Fortune by Investing in Gold and Other Hard Assets

By James Turk and John A. Rubino
New York, NY: Doubleday
2007
Pg. 134:
To steal a great line from Adam Smith’s classic Money Game, if you don’t know who you are, the stock market is an expensive place to find out.
 
Google Books
Your Money and Your Brain:
How the New Science of Neuroeconomics Can Help Make You Rich

By Jason Zweig
New York, NY: Simon & Schuster
2008
Pg. 6:
“If you don’t know who you are,” quipped the investment writer “Adam Smith” in his classic book The Money Game, then Wall Street “is an expensive place to find out.”

Posted by Barry Popik
New York CityBanking/Finance/Insurance • Sunday, January 09, 2011 • Permalink


Commenting is not available in this channel entry.