What are these matters about which the investor should learn if he is to obtain the type of investment which in a few years might show him a gain of … - Philip Arthur Fisher

Look at the analysts around you. Although few of them are living in downright squalor, most do not seem quite so financially well off as should be warranted by taking full advantage of the unusual field in which they are working. Therefore should we conclude (1) analysts are a bunch of dumbbells, or (2) it is impossible to do what most of them are attempting, which is possibly a polite way of saying they are a bunch of charlatans, or (3) there are fundamental errors in the methods of approach used by sizable numbers of them, which errors of method prevent them from accomplishing the results that their basic intelligence would otherwise attain?

From time to time, fundamental changes of great investment significance affect large groups of common stocks. Usually for some time after these new influences are felt, the great majority of the investment community have little appreciation of their true importance. Then as the real significance of what has happened dawns, a spectacular change occurs in the market price of the affected securities. Fortunes are sometimes made by those who appreciated the significance of what was happening early—before it was importantly reflected in changed quotations for individual stocks.

The first and probably the most important thing for the investor to recognize about inflation is this: As long as the overwhelming majority of Americans maintain firmly held existing opinions concerning the duties and obligations of their government, more and more inflation is inevitable. ...
Why is more inflation so sure to come? Because under the economic system we have established the seeds of inflation sprout not in times of prosperity but in times of depression About eighty per cent of our federal revenue is derived from corporate and individual income taxes. The base source of federal funds is notoriously sensitive to the level of general business. It shrinks sharply on even moderate downturns in the general economy.
However, this is not all that happens when general business gets bad. We have enacted laws, including unemployment insurance and farm relief, which make make mandatory a sharp increase of government payments in just these same periods of bad business when federal income is lowest. Furthermore, these laws already on the statute books are almost certainly but the smallest part of the special outpouring of government money that would occur when a truly severe depression might develop.