In 1940, a former trader named Fred Schwed Jr sat down to write a book about Wall Street.

Mr Schwed had a front row seat for the crash of 1929, the unbridled Wall Street enthusiasm that preceded it, and the depression which followed. What he penned is a thoroughly enjoyable account of finance which continues to resonate, so much so that it was re-released during the bull market of the 1950s, again in 1996, and then again in 2006 – just before the crisis.

The whole thing is well worth a read, but as a fellow financial writer (of sorts) one passage struck me in particular.

It was written as part of Mr Schwed’s introduction to the 1955 edition of the novel and besides being beautifully-written, pretty much sums up the perennial debate over buy-and-hold. Plus “guerdon” is just a really excellent word.

In my case I have not only written airily on financial matters but I have actually been fiddling around with common stocks most of my mature life. My passions have rarely been stirred by senior securities. And as of this writing the common-stock market has been going up for fifteen years and is at a new high since ancient Rome. Yet I haven’t got a Cadillac to my name.

I lay this mediocre result to the impressionable-ness of my youth. In those days I used to work at a trading table across from an older man, a cynical Irishman whose cynicism I secretly admired. Oft was I privileged to hear him mutter his favorite bit of logic to himself: “What were securities created for in the first place? They were created to be sold, so sell them.”

Ever since, my tendency has been to buy stocks, all a-tremble as I do so. Then when they show a profit I sell them exultantly. (But never within six months, of course. I’m no anarchist.) It seems to me at these moments that I have achieved life’s loveliest guerdon – making some money without doing any work. Then a long time later it turns out that I should have just bought them, and thereafter I should have just sat on them like a fat, stupid peasant. A peasant, however, who is rich beyond his limited dreams of avarice.

Where are the customers yachts: or a good hard look at Wall Street