Lessons to Live By In his final column for the Wall Street Journal and MarketWatch.com, Herb Greenberg

Lessons to Live By


In his final column for the Wall Street Journal and MarketWatch.com, Herb Greenberg boiled everything he has learned as a columnist down to five things:

THE NUMBERS DON'T LIE. They can be stir-fried, oven-fried or convection baked, but in the end they always hold the keys to the kingdom.

QUALITY, NOT QUANTITY. Ignore the "beat the Street" headlines on earnings. It’s what goes into the earnings that counts.

GAAP ISN'T THE SAME AS THE GOOD HOUSEKEEPING SEAL. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, according to which all financial statements are supposed to be prepared, include plenty of gray areas that give management enough rope to hang itself.

DON'T CONFUSE STOCKS AND COMPANIES. They sometimes go in opposite directions. The numbers may not lie, but stocks sometimes do.

RISK ISN'T A FOUR-LETTER WORD. A good rule of thumb is that before you buy, instead of asking how much you can make, first ask how much you can lose. That is what the smart guys do.