"If you have a temperament that when others are fearful you’re going to get scared yourself, you know, you are not going to make a lot of money in securities over time, in all probability.
"You know, people really — if they didn’t look at quotations — but, of course, the whole world is urging them to look at quotations, and more than that, do something based on small changes in quotations.
"But think how much more rational — we’ve talked about it before — but think how much more rational investing in a farm is than the way many people buy stocks.
"If you buy a farm, do you get a quote next week, do you get a quote next month? If you buy an apartment house, do you get a quote next week or month?
"No, you look at the apartment house or the farm and you say, 'I expect it to produce so many bushels of soybeans and corn, and if it does that, it meets my expectations.'
"If they buy a stock and they think if it goes up it’s wonderful, and if it goes down it’s bad.
"We think just the opposite. When it goes down we love it, because we’ll buy more. And if it goes up, it kills us to buy more.
"And I — you know — all kinds — you know, Ben Graham wrote about it. It’s been explained. But if you can’t get yourself in that mental attitude, you’re going to be scared whenever everybody else is scared.
"And to expect somebody else to tell you when to buy and therefore get your courage back up or something, you know, I could get this fellow’s courage up substantially by saying this is a wonderful time to buy, and then a week from now he’d run into somebody else that tells him the world is coming to an end and he’d sell.
"I mean, he’s a broker’s friend, but he’s not going to make a lot of money."
