My readers know my core survival checklist.

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"It's one last look at my 50-item checklist that I've looked at for weeks and weeks and weeks, " he says smiling.

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And one of my key investing tools is a checklist of 98 or so items that help me avoid bad stock picks (most gleaned from mistakes the very best investors on the planet have made).

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My list was copied from the famed checklist the Federal Aviation Administration mandates to keep airline crashes to a minimum.

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To this day, I still recall my utter disgust in getting a pack of gum (with stale gum) that had both the annual checklist card and the card of National League Commissioner Warren Giles.

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