FROM The Devil’s Financial Dictionary by Jason Zweig:
Data (n): The raw material from which Wall Street fabricates distortions for marketing purposes.
Downside protection, (n): A tactic put in place by a financial adviser to protect against whatever hurt the value of a portfolio last time. Ensuring the portfolio will be hurt by something entirely different next time.
Financial journalist, (n): An expert at moving words about markets around until they sound impressive, regardless of whether they mean anything. Nowadays, most financial journalists are honest, which is progress, and ignorant, which isn’t.
Forecasting, (v): The attempt to predict the unknowable by measuring the irrelevant; a task that … employs a lot of people on Wall Street.
High net worth individual, (n): The term brokers, financial advisers, fund companies and wealth managers use to describe someone whose assets can yield a gusher of fees. You could just call these folks "rich people", of course, but that would be crass — and poor marketing. It’s always easier to pick someone’s pocket when you use jargon to make that person feel like part of a private club whose members are rich.
Self-control, (n): The secret to success as an investor. Within you lurk an angel, a devil, a scholar and an idiot. If the angel and the scholar ever let down their guard, the devil and the idiot will wreak havoc that will take years of work to undo.
Stock market, (n): A chaotic hive of millions of people who overpay for hope and underpay for value. Tactical asset allocation, (v): A way of describing "market timing" with nine syllables instead of four, making it sound nearly two-and-a-half times more impressive. That does not make it more successful.
