Investments

The title of this article comes from the opening line of the famous poem, “If” by Rudyard Kipling. In the poem, he lists several attributes that define a responsible, levelheaded adult.

Many investors may be feeling as if they got coal in their stockings for Christmas, given the 650-point fall in the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) in its Christmas Eve trading session. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq indices performed similarly, falling 2.7 and 2.2 percent, respectively.

Every value investor remembers the quote from Bernard Baruch, when asked for the secret of his stock market success: “Buy your straw hats in the winter time.” Baruch isn’t alone; a host of savvy investors, including people like Warren Buffett, are devoted believers in the principle of buying undervalued companies and holding them for the long Tags:

• Investments