Merton Miller

“If you're not a risk taker, you should get the hell out of business.”

“Everybody has some information. The function of the markets is to aggregate that information, evaluate it, and get it incorporated into prices.”

“The best a private investor can do is buy a low-cost index fund and sit on it.”

“We came to the conclusion that a corporation's capital structure is irrelevant. It was a shocking conclusion at the time.”

“To the extent that there are patterns in stock prices, they are very, very noisy.”

“Financial innovation has been a powerful force for good.”

“Most of the time, the market is smarter than you are.”

“What we were saying is that it's the assets that matter, not how you finance them.”

“In an efficient market, there is no such thing as an undervalued stock.”

“Regulation is the enemy of innovation.”

“The whole point of the Modigliani-Miller theorem was to show what doesn't matter, so you could focus on what does.”

“Financial markets are the information processing mechanisms of a capitalist economy.”

“People who say that derivatives are the work of the devil are just showing their ignorance.”