For self-directed stock market investors

For self-directed stock market investors, The Battle for Investment Survival is a fun read by a veteran trader,

Gerald M. Loeb. It was originally published in 1935, and has that era’s fear of risk. Loeb advises that we try

to view our stocks as if we don’t own them; any that we wouldn’t buy, we should sell. This is meant to

overcome the “endowment effect,” a term (from the “new science” of behavioral economics) that describes the

quirk of human nature in which we value something that we already own more than we would value the same thing

if we didn’t own it.

Nestled inside another Economist article is this little tidbit about the MBT Ema Sandalsi governing council’s

take on freedom of the press:

Though appointed and not elected, the council is reasonably representative of MBT Ema Sandals’s various groups.

But it also has its flaws, one of which is a growing allergy to criticism. Its members say they believe in a

free press but have shut down, albeit temporarily, the MBT Ema Sandalsi operations of two of the Arab world’s

most popular satellite channels.