Three Strikes—You’re Out!

In the nineteenth century, the Americans invented a new sport—baseball. At one time thought of by us Britons as a sort of “poor man’s cricket,” baseball eventually became an international sport and, at this point in time, in virtually any country in the world, the exclamation “Three strikes—you’re out” means to all and sundry that the individual in question is finished for the time being.

And the phrase is sometimes used in investment circles. One investor can be heard advising another, “Don’t b...