“Confronted with a challenge to
distill the secret of sound investment into three words, we venture the motto,
Margin of Safety.” - Ben Graham
“If it’s close, we don’t play.” - Ben Graham
Either: "In the short run, the
market is a voting machine, but in the long run it is a weighing machine."
or "the market is not a weighing machine ... Rather should
we say that the market is a voting machine ... product partly of reason and
partly of emotion." - Ben Graham
"You don't need to be an expert in order to achieve satisfactory
investment returns. But if you aren't, you must recognize your limitations and
follow a course certain to work reasonably well. Keep things simple and don't
swing for the fences. When promised quick profits, respond with a quick
'no'." - Warren Buffett
“The game of life is the game of everlasting learning. At least it is if you
want to win.” – Charlie Munger
“It was never my thinking that made
the big money. It was always my sitting. Men who can both be right and sit
tight are uncommon. I found it one of the hardest things to learn. But it is
only after a stock operator has firmly grasped this that he can make big
money.” - Jesse Livermore
"Value investing is risk
aversion." - Seth Klarman
"Value investing is at its core
the marriage of a contrarian streak and a calculator." - Seth Klarman
“To achieve long-term success over
many financial market and economic cycles, observing a few rules is not enough.
Too many things change too quickly in the investment world for that approach to
succeed. It is necessary instead to understand the rationale behind the rules
in order to appreciate why they work when they do and don't when they don't.”
-Seth Klarman
"It is better to be
roughly right than precisely wrong." - John Maynard Keynes
Seth Klarman (born 1957) is an American billionaire who founded the Baupost Group, a Boston-based private investment partnership, and the author of a book on value investing titled Margin of Safety: Risk-Averse Value Investing Strategies for the Thoughtful Investor.
Warren Edward Buffett (born August 30, 1930) is an American business magnate, investor and philanthropist. He was the most successful investor of the 20th century. Buffett is the chairman, CEO and largest shareholder of Berkshire Hathaway, and consistently ranked among the world's wealthiest people. He was ranked as the world's wealthiest person in 2008 and as the third wealthiest in 2011. In 2012 Time named Buffett one of the world's most influential people.
Charles Thomas Munger (born January 1, 1924) is an American business magnate, lawyer, investor, and philanthropist. He is Vice-Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Corporation, the diversified investment corporation chaired by Warren Buffett; in this capacity, Buffett describes Munger as "my partner." Munger served as chairman of Wesco Financial Corporation
from 1984 through 2011 (Wesco was approximately 80%-owned by
Berkshire-Hathaway during that time). He is also the chairman of the Daily Journal Corporation, based in Los Angeles, California, US, and a director of Costco Wholesale Corporation.
John Maynard Keynes, 1st Baron Keynes,CB, FBA (5 June 1883 – 21 April 1946) was a British economist whose ideas have fundamentally affected the theory and practice of modern macroeconomics, and informed the economic policies of governments. He built on and greatly refined earlier work on the causes of business cycles,
and is widely considered to be one of the founders of modern
macroeconomics and the most influential economist of the 20th century. His ideas are the basis for the school of thought known as Keynesian economics, and its various offshoots.
Benjamin Graham (real name Grossbaum) ( May 8, 1894 – September 21, 1976) was a British-born American professional investor. Graham is considered the father of value investing, an investment approach he began teaching at Columbia Business School in 1928 and subsequently refined with David Dodd through various editions of their famous book Security Analysis.
Graham had many disciples in his lifetime, a number of whom went on to
become successful investors themselves. Graham's most well-known
disciples include Warren Buffett, William J. Ruane, Irving Kahn and Walter J. Schloss,
among others. Buffett, who credits Graham as grounding him with a sound
intellectual investment framework, described him as the second most
influential person in his life after his own father. In fact, Graham had
such an overwhelming influence on his students that two of them,
Buffett and Kahn, named their sons Howard Graham Buffett and Thomas Graham Kahn after him. Graham also taught at the UCLA Anderson School of Management.
