Peter L. Bernstein Says Take the Win

You never get poor by taking a profit.
— Peter L. Bernstein

Peter Bernstein's short sentence is built on a life of long study.

An investor, asset manager, and author of 10 books, Bernstein was one of the first to frame investing in terms of probability and psychology, rather than prediction. He drew on centuries of intellectual history to show that the rise of financial markets wasn’t just about money. It was about our attempt to tame uncertainty.

The point of his quote wasn’t to sell early or to fear growth. It was to accept that surviving is more important than maximizing gains. In his mind, taking a profit was about living to invest another day. When we don't take a profit, we risk losing money.

Bernstein's best-selling book, Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk, is a history of the human relationship with uncertainty, from gamblers in ancient Greece up to modern chaos theory.

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