Exploring Mark Twain's Quote and Market Overconfidence

Our journey to 25 Sayings on Vol and Risk continues, folks…and as UFC’s Bruce Buffer is known to emphatically tells us…”It’s TIME!”… for our third segment…sayings 11-15. We’ve got some good ones ahead of us and, as always, I aim to share some of my thinking on markets, overlay a dose of history and pop culture and, perhaps, give you a chuckle in the process.  We’ll be in and out in under 30 minutes, i.e., shorter than a Powell presser, a five-block cab ride from the east side to west side, and no doubt less time it takes Windows to update the drivers on your PC.
 

Sayings 11 through 15 are…
 

1. “If history is a foreign country, the history of risk is another planet.”

2. “By definition, there’s a winner to every back-test.”

3. “Price is a liar.”

4. “Volatility is an instrument of truth.”

5. “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you in trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”