• Summon Your Courage and Buy Stocks

    Investors who conquer stock-phobia have an edge over those too focused on their rearview mirror By Jason Zweig 2025: Oct. 4, 2008 12:01 am ET During the Great…

Latest articles

  • Thought of the Day

    Thought of the Day

    2000: If owning stocks is a long-term project for you, following their changes constantly is a very, very bad idea. Its the worst possible thing you can do, because people are so sensitive to short-term losses. If you count your money every day, youll be miserable.

    –Daniel Kahneman, Princeton professor of psychology, in Jason Zweig, Do You Sabotage Yourself? Money Magazine, May, 2001, p. 78.
Money in Art, Money in Culture
Book Icon

Books

Jason is the author of “Your Money and Your Brain,” on the neuroscience of investing, and the editor of the revised edition of Benjamin Graham’s “The Intelligent Investor,” the classic text that Warren Buffett has described as “by far the best book about investing ever written.”

Discover more

Recent Books

Today in Financial History

1997: Just under two years after breaking the 1000 barrier, the NASDAQ Composite Index rises 11.69 points to close at 1502.62, closing above 1500 for the first time.

1986: "Financial engineering" takes a quantum leap as Fannie Mae (the Federal National Mortgage Association) offers the first issue of stripped mortgage-backed securities through Goldman, Sachs & Co. Now bond buyers can buy either interest-only or principal-only bonds, enabling them to bet aggressively on the direction of interest rates. Now institutional bond investors can buy either interest-only or principal-only bonds, enabling them to bet aggressively on the direction of interest rates — and homeowners can, much more readily, refinance their mortgages as interest rates fall.

John A. Thain and Philip Darivoff, "Strips: The Ultimate Mortgage Technology?" Goldman Sachs research report, April, 1997, p. 1.

1985: Coca-Cola announces the return of Coke Classic after the company had tried displacing the old formula with New Coke — such a stunning development that ABC's Peter Jennings interrupts General Hospital with the news flash. One of the greatest marketing debacles in history ends as Coke boss Roberto Goizueta tells the public, "We have heard you."

Frederick Allen, Secret Formula: How Brilliant Marketing and Relentless Salesmanship Made Coca-Cola the Best-Known Product in the World (HarperBusiness, New York, 1994), pp. 414-415.

1864: As Confederate Lt. Gen. Jubal A. Early defeats Union Maj. Gen. Lew Wallace (later the author of Ben Hur) and marches toward the outskirts of Washington, D.C., the U.S. dollar hits an all-time low. Alarmed at the bad news from the battlefield, traders in New York are willing to pay only .3509 gold dollars for a single greenback.