Dranil Gupta

“On balance, the financial system subracts value from society”
― John C. Bogle, Enough: True Measures of Money, Business, and Life

“In recent years, annual trading in stocks—necessarily creating, by reason of the transaction costs involved, negative value for traders—averaged some $33 trillion. But capital formation—that is, directing fresh investment capital to its highest and best uses, such as new businesses, new technology, medical breakthroughs, and modern plant and equipment for existing business—averaged some $250 billion. Put another way, speculation represented about 99.2 percent of the activities of our equity market system, with capital formation accounting for 0.8 percent.”
― John C. Bogle, The Clash of the Cultures: Investment vs. Speculation

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

“Pressed to identify useful financial innovations created during the past quarter-century, Paul A. Volcker, former Federal Reserve Chairman and recent chairman of President Obama’s Economic Recovery Board, could single out only one: “The ATM.”
― John C. Bogle, The Clash of the Cultures: Investment vs. Speculation