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| Rule No. 1: Never lose money. Rule No.2: Never forget rule No. 1. |
| - Warren Buffet |
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| You do things when the opportunities come along. I've had periods in my life when I've had a bundle of ideas come along, and I've had long dry spells. If I get an idea next week, I'll do something. If not, I won't do a damn thing. |
| - Warren Buffet |
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| Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks. |
| - Warren Buffet |
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| You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don't do too many things wrong. |
| - Warren Buffet |
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| Risk can be greatly reduced by concentrating on only a few holdings. |
| - Warren Buffet |
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| Risk comes from not knowing what you're doing. |
| - Warren Buffet |
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| "Turn-arounds" seldom turn. |
| - Warren Buffet |
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| Accounting consequences do not influence our operating or capital-allocation decisions. When acquisition costs are similar, we much prefer to purchase $2 of earnings that is not reportable by us under standard accounting principles than to purchase $1 of earnings that is reportable. |
| - Warren Buffet |
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| Always invest for the long term. |
| - Warren Buffet |
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| An investor needs to do very few things right as long as he or she avoids big mistakes. |
| - Warren Buffet |
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| An investor should act as though he had a lifetime decision card with just twenty punches on it. |
| - Warren Buffet |
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| An investor should ordinarily hold a small piece of an outstanding business with the same tenacity that an owner would exhibit if he owned all of that business. |
| - Warren Buffet |
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| As far as you are concerned, the stock market does not exist. Ignore it. |
| - Warren Buffet |
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| Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy only when others are fearful. |
| - Warren Buffet |
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| Buy a business, don't rent stocks. |
| - Warren Buffet |
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| Buy companies with strong histories of profitability and with a dominant business franchise. |
| - Warren Buffet |
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| By definition if you've got a million and a half shares roughly, you know you've only got so many seats, and you want people in those seats that are as in sync with you, and your objectives, and your time horizons, and all of that as you can. I mean that's how you have happy church, a happy home, a happy school or what ever it may be, is to have people there that are more or less are on the same wave length. |
| - Warren Buffet |
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| Calculate "owner earnings" to get a true reflection of value. |
| - Warren Buffet |
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| Do not take yearly results too seriously. Instead, focus on four or five-year averages. |
| - Warren Buffet |
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| Does management resist the institutional imperative? |
| - Warren Buffet |
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| Focus on return on equity, not earnings per share. |
| - Warren Buffet |
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| Growth and value investing are joined at the hip. |
| - Warren Buffet |
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| I never attempt to make money on the stock market. I buy on the assumption that they could close the market the next day and not reopen it for five years. |
| - Warren Buffet |
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| If past history was all there was to the game, the richest people would be librarians. |
| - Warren Buffet |
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| It is optimism that is the enemy of the rational buyer. |
| - Warren Buffet |
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| It's far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price. |
| - Warren Buffet |
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| Lethargy, bordering on sloth should remain the cornerstone of an investment style. |
| - Warren Buffet |
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| Look at market fluctuations as your friend rather than your enemy; profit from folly rather than participate in it. |
| - Warren Buffet |
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| Look for companies with high profit margins. |
| - Warren Buffet |
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| Many stock options in the corporate world have worked in exactly that fashion: they have gained in value simply because management retained earnings, not because it did well with the capital in its hands. |
| - Warren Buffet |
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| Much success can be attributed to inactivity. Most investors cannot resist the temptation to constantly buy and sell. |
| - Warren Buffet |
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| Never invest in a business you cannot understand. |
| - Warren Buffet |
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| Only buy something that you'd be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for 10 years. |
| - Warren Buffet |
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| Our favorite holding period is forever. |
| - Warren Buffet |
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| Price is what you pay. Value is what you get. |
| - Warren Buffet |
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| Remember that the stock market is manic-depressive. |
| - Warren Buffet |
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| Stop trying to predict the direction of the stock market, the economy, interest rates, or elections. |
| - Warren Buffet |
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| The ability to say "no" is a tremendous advantage for an investor. |
| - Warren Buffet |
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| The advice "you never go broke taking a profit" is foolish. |
| - Warren Buffet |
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| The critical investment factor is determining the intrinsic value of a business and paying a fair or bargain price. |
| - Warren Buffet |
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| The investor of today does not profit from yesterday's growth. |
| - Warren Buffet |
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| Unless you can watch your stock holding decline by 50% without becoming panic-stricken, you should not be in the stock market |
| - Warren Buffet |
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| Wall Street is the only pace that people ride to in a Rolls Royce to get advice from those who take the subway. |
| - Warren Buffet |
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| We do not view the company itself as the ultimate owner of our business assets but instead view the company as a conduit through which our shareholders own assets. |
| - Warren Buffet |
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| We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful. |
| - Warren Buffet |
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| What it is, it's a gathering of owners and these people feel like owners, we treat them like owners and we try to have them have a good time while their here. But these are people who are real shareholder owners, as opposed to somebody who owns a ticker symbol and is thinking about next quarters earnings or something of the sort. So it's a different breed of shareholder |
| - Warren Buffet |
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| When Berkshire buys common stock, we approach the transaction as if we were buying into a private business. |
| - Warren Buffet |
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| Why not invest your assets in companies you really like? As Mae West said, "Too much of a good thing can be wonderful". |
| - Warren Buffet |
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| Wide diversification is only required when investors do not understand what they are doing. |
| - Warren Buffet |
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| Wild swings in share prices have more to do with the "lemming- like" behaviour of institutional investors than with the aggregate returns of the company they own. |
| - Warren Buffet |
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| You are neither right nor wrong because the crowd disagrees with you. You are right because your data and reasoning are right. |
| - Warren Buffet |
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| I am no longer an advocate of elaborate techniques of security analysis in order to find superior value opportunities. |
| - Benjamin Graham |
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| The individual investor should act consistently as an investor and not as a speculator. This means.. that he should be able to justify every purchase he makes and each price he pays by impersonal, objective reasoning that satisfies him that he is getting more than his money's worth for his purchase. |
| - Benjamin Graham |
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| The fact that other people agree or disagree with you makes you neither right nor wrong. You will be right if your facts and your reasoning are correct. |
| - Benjamin Graham |
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| Most of the time common stocks are subject to irrational and excessive price fluctuations in both directions as the consequence of the ingrained tendency of most people to speculate or gamble... to give way to hope, fear and greed. |
| - Benjamin Graham |
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| Wall Street people learn nothing and forget everything. |
| - Benjamin Graham |
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| Confronted with the challenge to distil the secret of sound investment into three words, we venture the motto, Margin of Safety. |
| - Benjamin Graham |
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| Individuals who cannot master their emotions are ill-suited to profit from the investment process. |
| - Benjamin Graham |
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| Many sceptics, it is true, are inclined to dismiss the whole procedure [chart reading] as akin to astrology or necromancy; but the sheer weight of its importance in Wall Street requires that its pretensions be examined with some degree of care. |
| - Benjamin Graham |
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| The one principal that applies to nearly all these so-called "technical approaches" is that one should buy because a stock or the market has gone up and one should sell because it has declined. This is the exact opposite of sound business sense everywhere else, and it is most unlikely that it can lead to lasting success in Wall Street. In our own stock-market experience and observation, extending over 50 years, we have not known a single person who has consistently or lastingly made money by thus "following the market." We do not hesitate to declare that this approach is as fallacious as it is popular. |
| - Benjamin Graham |
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| The person that turns over the most rocks wins the game. And that's always been my philosophy. |
| - Peter Lynch |
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| In this business if you're good, you're right six times out of ten. You're never going to be right nine times out of ten. |
| - Peter Lynch |
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| Go for a business that any idiot can run - because sooner or later, any idiot probably is going to run it. |
| - Peter Lynch |
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| I got positive feelings when I saw that Taco Bell's headquarters was stuck behind a bowling alley. When I saw those executives operating out of that grim little bunker, I was thrilled. Obviously they weren't wasting money on landscaping the office. |
| - Peter Lynch |
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| Although it's easy to forget sometimes, a share of a stock is not a lottery ticket. It's part ownership of a business. |
| - Peter Lynch |
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| Between the chance of making an unusually large profit on an unknown company and the assurance of losing only a small amount on an established company, the normal mutual-fund manager, pension-fund manager, or corporate-portfolio manager would jump at the latter. Success is one thing, but it's more important not to look bad if you fail. |
| - Peter Lynch |
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| Everyone has the brainpower to follow the stock market. If you made it through fifth-grade math, you can do it. |
| - Peter Lynch |
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| I like buying companies that can be run by monkeys - because one day they will be. |
| - Peter Lynch |
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| I think you have to learn that there's a company behind every stock, and that there's only one real reason why stocks go up. Companies go from doing poorly to doing well or small companies grow to large companies. |
| - Peter Lynch |
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| If I could avoid a single stock, it would be the hottest stock in the hottest industry, the one that gets the most favourable publicity, the one that every investor hears about in the car pool or on the commuter train - and succumbing to the social pressure, often buys. |
| - Peter Lynch |
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| If you know why you bought a stock in the first place, you'll automatically have a better idea of when to say goodbye to it. |
| - Peter Lynch |
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| If you remember nothing else about p/e ratios, remember to avoid stocks with excessively high ones. A company with a high p/e must have incredible earnings growth to justify its high price. |
| - Peter Lynch |
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| If you're considering a stock on the strength of some specific product that a company makes, the first thing to find out is: what effect will the success of the product have on the company's bottom line? |
| - Peter Lynch |
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| In stocks you've got the company's growth on your side. You're a partner in a prosperous and expanding business. In bonds, you're nothing more than the nearest source of spare change. When you lend money to somebody, the best you can hope for is to get it back, plus interest. |
| - Peter Lynch |
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| In this business if you're good, you're right six times out of ten. You're never going to be right nine times out of ten. |
| - Peter Lynch |
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| Investing in stocks is an art, not a science, and people who've been trained to rigidly quantify everything have a big disadvantage. |
| - Peter Lynch |
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| Investing without research is like playing stud poker and never looking at the cards. |
| - Peter Lynch |
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| It only takes a handful of big winners to make a lifetime of investing worthwhile. |
| - Peter Lynch |
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| I've found that when the market's going down and you buy funds wisely, at some point in the future you will be happy. You won't get there by reading 'Now is the time to buy.' |
| - Peter Lynch |
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| Just because the price goes up doesn't mean you're right. Just because it goes down doesn't mean you're wrong. Stock prices often move in opposite directions from the fundamentals but long term the direction and sustainability of profits will prevail. |
| - Peter Lynch |
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| Never invest in any idea you can't illustrate with a crayon. |
| - Peter Lynch |
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| Some people automatically sell the 'winners' - stocks that go up - and hold on to their 'losers' - stocks that go down - which is about as sensible as pulling out the flowers and watering the weeds. Others automatically sell their losers and hold on to their winners, which doesn't work out much better. Both strategies fail because they're tied to the current movement of the stock price as an indicator of the company's fundamental value. |
| - Peter Lynch |
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| The key to making money in stocks is not to get scared out of them. |
| - Peter Lynch |
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| The list of qualities [an investor ought to have] include patience, self-reliance, common sense, a tolerance for pain, open-mindedness, detachment, persistence, humility, flexibility, a willingness to do independent research, an equal willingness to admit mistakes, and the ability to ignore general panic. |
| - Peter Lynch |
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| There seems to be an unwritten rule on Wall Street: If you don't understand it, put your life savings into it. Shun the enterprise round the corner, which can at least be observed, and seek out one that manufactures an incomprehensible product. |
| - Peter Lynch |
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| To me, an investment is simply a gamble in which you've managed to tilt the odds in your favour. |
| - Peter Lynch |
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| Twenty years in this business convinces me that any normal person using the customary three per cent of the brain can pick stocks as well as, if not better, than the average Wall Street expert. |
| - Peter Lynch |
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| Warren Buffett thinks that stock futures and options ought to be outlawed, and I agree with him. |
| - Peter Lynch |
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| Warren Buffett, the greatest investor of them all, looks for the same opportunities I do, except that when he finds them, he buys the whole company. |
| - Peter Lynch |
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| When it comes to predicting the market, the important skill is not listening, but snoring. The trick is not to learn to trust your gut feelings, but rather to discipline yourself to ignore them. Stand by your stocks as long as the fundamental story of the company hasn't changed. |
| - Peter Lynch |
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| When stocks are attractive, you buy them. Sure, they can go lower. I've bought stocks at $12 that went to $2, but then they later went to $30. You just don't know when you can find the bottom. |
| - Peter Lynch |
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| When ten people would rather talk to a dentist about plaque than to the manager of an equity mutual fund about stocks, it's likely that the market is about to turn up. When the neighbours tell me what to buy and then I wish I had taken their advice, it's a sure sign that the market has reached a top and is due for a tumble. |
| - Peter Lynch |
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| When you buy a stock for its book value, you have to have a detailed understanding of what those values really are. At Penn Central, tunnels through mountains and useless rail cars counted as assets. |
| - Peter Lynch |
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| Whoever imagines that the average Wall Street professional is looking for reasons to buy exciting stocks hasn't spent much time on Wall Street. The fund manager most likely is looking for reasons not to buy exciting stocks, so that he can offer the proper excuses if those exciting stocks go up. |
| - Peter Lynch |
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| You don't have to invest like an institution. If you invest like an institution, you're doomed to perform like one, which in many cases isn't very well. |
| - Peter Lynch |
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| You get recessions, you have stock market declines. If you don't understand that's going to happen, then you're not ready, you won't do well in the markets. |
| - Peter Lynch |
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| When even the analysts are bored, it's time to start buying. |
| - Peter Lynch |
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| A dazed and confused public has been persuaded that investing is easy and that stock prices only go up. |
| - John Neff |
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| As bull markets progress, prevailing wisdom becomes a drumbeat that drowns out the argument for a low p/e strategy. Ironically, the merits of low p/e ratios are most compelling amid the clamor for hot stocks and hot sectors, but that is when investors are least likely to listen. |
| - John Neff |
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| By failing to perform rigorous, fundamental analyses of companies, industries, or economic trends, investors become prospectors who only chase gold where everyone else is already looking. |
| - John Neff |
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| I have read a good bit lately that low-P/E investing, the hallmark of traditional value investing, is dead. During my four decades as a professional investor, including three of them as manager of the Vanguard Windsor Fund (until I retired in December 1995), this sentiment surfaced repeatedly. Once again, these dismal reports are greatly exaggerated. Lucrative opportunities still await patient investors who stick to enduring principles. New twists on value investing invite disappointment. |
| - John Neff |
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| I wasted no time in executing my investment philosophy. |
| - John Neff |
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| In most industries nowadays, five years is a long time for markets, prices and competition to develop. |
| - John Neff |
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| Let it be on record that my first market call as a professional investor was wrong. |
| - John Neff |
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| Low price-earnings investor describes succinctly and accurately the investment style that guided Windsor while I was in charge. |
| - John Neff |
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| Low-P/E investing is not a casualty of the latest new era. Far from it. Stock market excesses invariably lead investors toward what is currently fashionable. Signaling the end of trends gone too far, inflection points mark broad shifts in investor sentiment, from bullish to bearish. They hand low-P/E investors the chance to capture extraordinary gains, when worthy, out-of-favor stocks regain the market's attention. Another new era won't erase this enduring principle. |
| - John Neff |
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| No solitary measure or pair of measures should govern a decision to buy a stock. |
| - John Neff |
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| The goal is to find earnings growth capable of capturing the market's attention once the climate shifts. |
| - John Neff |
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| Markets are constantly in a state of uncertainty and flux and money is make by discounting the obvious and betting on the unexpected. |
| - George Soros |
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| Stock market bubbles don't grow out of thin air. They have a solid basis in reality, but reality as distorted by a misconception. |
| - George Soros |
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| The financial markets generally are unpredictable. So that one has to have different scenarios.. The idea that you can actually predict what's going to happen contradicts my way of looking at the market. |
| - George Soros |
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| As a kid I played Monopoly with the twist I invented of buying and selling shares in the bank. Well, today, I do the same. |
| - George Soros |
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| I am cautious about going against the herd; I am liable to be trampled on. |
| - George Soros |
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| I am not an entrepreneur who builds businesses. I am an investor who judges them. My function in the financial markets is that of a critic and my critical judgements are expressed by my decisions to buy and sell. |
| - George Soros |
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| I could have made things more difficult but I didn't because I felt a certain responsibility not to destroy the European Monetary System. |
| - George Soros |
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| I felt safe betting with the Bundesbank. The Bundesbank clearly wanted the lira and the pound devalued, but it was prepared to defend the franc. In the end, the score was Bundesbank 3-nil; speculators, 2-1. |
| - George Soros |
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| It's not whether you're right or wrong that's important, but how much money you make when you're right and how much you lose when you're wrong. |
| - George Soros |
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| Markets are constantly in a state of uncertainty and flux and money is make by discounting the obvious and betting on the unexpected. |
| - George Soros |
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| My approach works not by making valid predictions but by allowing me to correct false ones. |
| - George Soros |
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| Stock market bubbles don't grow out of thin air. They have a solid basis in reality, but reality as distorted by a misconception. |
| - George Soros |
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| The financial markets generally are unpredictable. So that one has to have different scenarios.. The idea that you can actually predict what's going to happen contradicts my way of looking at the market. |
| - George Soros |
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| The more the theory of efficient markets is believed, the less efficient the markets become. |
| - George Soros |
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| The way to build long-term returns is through preservation of capital and home runs. |
| - George Soros |
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| The worse a situation becomes the less it takes to turn it around, the bigger the upside. |
| - George Soros |
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| We did short a lot of sterling and we did make a lot of money, because our funds are so large. We must have been the biggest single factor in the market in the days before the ERM fell apart. Our total position by Black Wednesday had to be worth almost $10 billion. We planned to sell more than that. In fact, when Norman Lamont said just before the devaluation that he would borrow nearly $15 billion to defend sterling, we were amused because that was about how much we wanted to sell. |
| - George Soros |
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