No. 37

“With enough inside information and a million dollars, you can go broke in a year.”

Face it, by the time inside information gets to you, everyone else has heard it and traded on it. Besides, trading on inside informations is against the law. Warren has often said that one of the advantages to living in Omaha is that no one’s around to whisper inside scoops in his ear over lunch. Often, unscrupulous types start rumors so that they can drive up the price of shares so that they can dump them in the laps of gullible investors. Famed 1920s investment great Bernard Baruch was famous for selling out a stock position as soon as someone gave him a hot tip on it. Baruch, by the way, died a very, very rich man.