Arthur Levitt
Arthur Levitt
Arthur Levitt Jr.was the twenty-fifth and longest-serving Chairman of the United States Securities and Exchange Commissionfrom 1993 to 2001. Widely hailed as a champion of the individual investor, he has been criticized for not pushing for tougher accounting rules. Since May 2001 he has been employed as a senior adviser at the Carlyle Group. Levitt previously served as a policy advisor to Goldman Sachs and is a Director of Bloomberg LP, parent of Bloomberg News...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPublic Servant
Date of Birth3 February 1931
CountryUnited States of America
We are not looking for a bit of window dressing on the same old recycled gobbledygook, ... We expect you to do whatever it takes to speak to investors in a language they understand -- English.
Personally I don't think day traders are speculating, because traditional speculation requires some market knowledge. They are, instead, gambling, which doesn't.
Today it's fashionable to talk about the New Economy, or the Information Economy, or the Knowledge Economy. But when I think about the imperatives of this market, I view today's economy as the Value Economy. Adding value has become more than just a sound business principle; it is both the common denominator and the competitive edge.
While fund performance is unpredictable, the impact of fees is not, .. A 1- percent annual fee will reduce an ending account balance by 17 percent after 20 years.
But when that information travels only to a privileged few, when it is used to profit at the expense of the investing public, when that information comes by way of favored access rather than by acumen, insight or diligence, we must ask, 'Whose interest is really being served?'.
Investors should start with a view of skepticism. They should become intellectual investors rather than emotional investors. They should be careful, and they should be skeptical.
Another misconception is that an order is canceled when you hit 'cancel' on your computer. But, the fact is it's canceled only when the market gets the cancellation.
Over the past two decades, we have clearly seen an erosion of ethical values.
One way for investors to protect themselves from a rapid change in the price of a stock is to use a limit order rather than a market order.
I think we have got to start thinking about banding together in terms of interested groups.
I think that the failures of Enron and WorldCom and other companies are partially failures of investors to recognize companies that are selling for a thousand times nothing, but chances are they may be worth only that.
We should never lose sight of the underlying essence of a market-a place where buyers and sellers come together. Every other feature-whether crafted by tradition or technology-exists only to serve that primary purpose.
George Orwell once blamed the demise of the English language on politics. It's quite possible he never read a prospectus.
Today, the forces of competition, technology, and globalization have converged to spur innovation and to transform the way business is done in the securities industry.