The persistent speculator is comprised of all those who have no usable information about what their appointed 'investment' advisor is being told to buy by another advisor, neither of whom knows, within any statistical fidelity, what they are doing. They operate on luck, confidence, and Hugo Boss. Those things disappear in that order, but usually they have feathered their nest, not by making a profit for themselves (and their clients) but by the sure and simple way of taking a commission. The only way to invest is to invest in yourself and your immediate family. That way has been lost to most, due to the discount people place on future consequences. It doesn't matter how much money you have when it either disappears due to a 'market correction' that no one saw coming, or when it can no longer be exchanged for what you need, when you need it. One could go on and on, but I find it sufficient to say that no one knows what is going to happen in the future, and the farther one sttempts to speculate, the more chaotic are the predictions that any modelling used up to now have supplied. One thing appears to have held constant, and that is that human physiology hasn't changed appreciably over humdreds of thousands of years, however, the last few generations have managed to confuse the investing of money with the investing of right action.

Ian MacLeod