Unless we are able to exercise a considerable degree of control over our emotions, civilized life is impossible. In a typical family, by the time a baby is a year old he has begun to learn that staging a tantrum does not always bring him favorable results. And an adult can hardly earn a living or manage children or gain the respect of his associates unless he usually can manage his own nervous reactions.

At the same time, it is customary that at certain times and places a man may give way to some of his savage emotions without losing status among his peers. At this point, a reader may think: “What has this to do with a book on the cold-blooded subject of investing?” Well, the connection is that in the minds of large numbers of people, the stock market is one of those places where it is quite proper for a man to plunge in without knowing anything about what he is doing, or why. This attitude is stimulated by many brokers, to whom a cus tomer buying on impulse is preferable to one who stops to think. It is hard to distinguish between the impulse buyers and the more deliberate gamblers. These two groups, together with the people collecting fees from them, make so much fuss that a timid observer may readily assume that the whole stock market is just a wild party, where nothing is supposed to make sense. Certified Financial Planner - Read More.