Patience, Diversity Beat Clairvoyance.

Watch out for the bears on Wall Street Be on guard against the unpredictable bulls as well. But most of all, be ware rampaging metaphors and other figures of speech.

Hype isn't harmless. People can only read about so many floor collapses, era endings and Second Comings before one of two things, happens Either they start to panic themselves, or (gulp) they begin to question the credibility of the press.

Forget figuring out when a falling market will hit bottom. You don't know, I don't know, and neither does any body else.

There is also no telling when the next sustained advance in stock prices will begin.

In 1999, investors fell all over themselves to buy stocks of Internet companies that had never earned a penny. Now those same investors care about nothing but earnings disappointments."

A few people make a good living trading stocks in this maelstrom. I take my hat off to them. The rest of us have no business playing that game--and fortunately, no need to do it either.

The attribute that sets the stock market apart from so many other arenas of risk -- casinos, commodity markets, pools on college basketball's "March Madness" -- is that it usually pays out more than it takes in.

In a basically healthy economy like the one here in United States, the money invested in stocks becomes capital that creates wealth -- jobs that pay wages and salaries, earnings, dividends and so on. This is a chaotic processl.

No return is promised, not even the return of your capital. If we must know what we will get for our money, there are alternative such as Treasury bills and certificates of deposit.

Precisely, because of the uncertainty in the stock market, equities offer the hope of better payoffs -- may be much better. Over the last 21 years, on average, if was more than three times as much (16 percent a year, as measured by the Standard & Poor's 500 Index).

To give myself a chance at those rewards, I put some of my money in stocks, stock mutual funds or both. To protect myself against the chance that the '80s and '90s bull market really is over, and much tougher times lie ahead, I keep some of my money out of stocks.

Then my chance at success comes down to patience, not clairvoyance.