The Making of a Market Guru: Forbes Presents 25 Years of Ken Fisher

Chapter 3. 1986: Global-dy Gook

"If my mistakes recently have been many fewer than my successes, it does not change the fact that one learns more from one's mistakes than one's triumphs."

—"Lessons From My Losers," June 30, 1986

"The odds are overwhelming I will end up richer aiming for a good return rather than for a brilliant return — and sleep better en route. Folks who seek a killing usually get killed. Gunslingers get shot — often in the foot — with their own guns."

—"Be Conservative, Not Conventional," September 22, 1986

In his first 1986 column, Ken makes the point stocks can shrug off even the very worst news. Turns out, 1986 was a year of very, very bad news. Not so much for stocks — stocks did well in 1986, especially overseas. The S&P 500's 18.7 percent gain seemed paltry compared to the 69.9 percent gain in foreign shares!^[8] Even though 1986 was a fine investing year, it wasn't so great otherwise.

The year began tragically as the space shuttle Challenger, carrying school-teacher Christa McAuliffe, exploded shortly after takeoff. Just a few months later, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster rocked Eastern Europe and the world. In the US, as 1986 was winding down, the Iran-Contra Affair was making headlines — a scandal threatening to make it all the way to the Office of the President.

But financial markets events were more cheerful. In the UK, 1986 was the year of the Big Bang — the financial one, not the cosmological version. The deregulation of Britain's financial markets ...