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This article originally appeared in MarketToday on 3/03/11

Some days, the market does not give us time, or inclination to write a missive.  We struggle, we search for a line from some story that we can exploit for your edification.  I read a news article about Ken Fisher’s presentation to a group of investors last weekend in the Bahamas.  Ken Fisher manages over $43 billion dollars for customers from IBM to the United Nations.

We are most concerned with understanding the markets and economy.  In our daily work, we seek to understand the importance of all news bits that float through the media.  What does it mean; today, next week and will it affect our portfolio of investments and trades?

Ken Fisher gave his take on the markets, the dollar and future political problems.  All pretty pedestrian stuff.  His most valuable insight was the revelation of a poem he carried in his pocket.  He told the interviewer his father read this poem to him when he was child, “These are words to live by.”  I share it with you today out of the belief that success in stock investing requires more than the ability to read charts and do math.  A well balanced life leads to success.

IF

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream-and not make dreams your master,
If you can think-and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings-nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And-which is more-you’ll be a Man, my son!

-Rudyard Kipling

The information presented in this newsletter is based on generally available news releases, corporate filings, current events, interviews and the editor’s opinions. It may contain errors and you should not make investment decisions based solely on what you believe you have read here. Do your own research, it is your money. If you lose it, it is your responsibility, not ours or your grandmothers! The editor may or may not have a position in any securities discussed. The editor may have held a position in a security earlier, or in the future.

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