But hey, taking anyone’s advice on stocks is a crapshoot at best.

The great thing about the market is it has nothing to do with the actual stocks.

One of the single most important skills adults need is the ability to quickly recognize a salesman and a hard sell, and to respond accordingly. Like Buffet says, over the short term, the market is a voting machine, and over the longer term it is a weighting machine.

If you don’t understand what the quote at the top speaks to, then you are, quite simply, a sucker. All of this may be manipulation, but what freely expressed opinions do not include a component of manipulation? Watch television for one night, and while doing so, try to identify a point when you are NOT being manipulated. Do not hold your breath while doing this.

Fact is, manipulation is a word we’d do much better understanding if we didn’t assume it was by itself intrinsically negative. The fact is, across any domain or endeavor where there is craftsmanship of any type, there is in fact manipulation. Because craftsmanship is synonymous with manipulation.

I manipulate a hammer to drive a nail into a board. If the nail is sentient, it ought to ask whether it really wants to go into the board. Not to mention whether it’s worth getting hammered in order to be in the board.

If I need to hold two boards together, I am unlikely to provide full and fair disclosure to the nail. Instead, I speak to the noble purpose of the nail and the civil virtues that spring from holding boards together. That’s life, baby.

This is the sort of area where its very difficult to draft effective regulations without being draconian and extremely restrictive.

When it comes to things like “fomenting,” whether we are talking about markets, revolutions, or anything else, the only useful inoculation is audience prudence and healthy skepticism.

Here’s a simple rule for everyone:

“A loud insistent bigmouth salesman is usually full of sh!t.”

Remember it. Apply it. Be saved by it.