The stock market is the story of cycles and of the human behavior that is responsible for overreactions in both directions.
The best protection against risk is knowing what you are doing.
The single greatest edge an investor can have is a long-term orientation.
Patience and discipline can make you look foolishly out of touch until they make you look prudent and even prescient
Loss avoidance must be the cornerstone of your investment philosophy.
The near absence of bargains works as a reverse indicator for us. When we find there is little worth buying, there is probably much worth selling.
Successful investors tend to be unemotional, allowing the greed and fear of others to play into their hands. By having confidence in their own analysis and judgement, they respond to market forces not with blind emotion but with calculated reason. Successful investors, for example, demonstrate caution in frothy markets and steadfast conviction in panicky ones. Indeed, the very way an investor views the market and it’s price fluctuations is a key factor in his or her ultimate investment success or failure.
You must buy on the way down. There is far more volume on the way down than on the way back up, and far less competition among buyers. It is almost always better to be too early than too late, but you must be prepared for price markdowns on what you buy.
In investing it is never wrong to change your mind. It is only wrong to change your mind and do nothing about it.
Value investing is simple to understand but difficult to implement. Value investors are not supersophisticated analytical wizards who create and apply intricate computer models to find attractive opportunities or assess underlying value. The hard part is discipline, patience, and judgment. Investors need discipline to avoid the many unattractive pitches that are thrown, patience to wait for the right pitch, and judgment to know when it is time to swing.
The prevailing view has been that the market will earn a high rate of return if the holding period is long enough, but entry point is what really matters.
If you can remember that stocks aren't pieces of paper that gyrate all the time --they are fractional interests in businesses -- it all makes sense.
Sometimes buying early on the way down looks like being wrong, but it isn't.
People should be highly sceptical of anyone's including their own, ability to predict the future, and instead pursue strategies that can survive whatever may occur.
Warren Buffett likes to say that the first rule of investing is "Don't lose money," and the second rule is, "Never forget the first rule." I too believe that avoiding loss should be the primary goal of every investor. This does not mean that investors should never incur the risk of any loss at all. Rather "don't lose money" means that over several years an investment portfolio should not be exposed to appreciable loss of principal.
A simple rule applies: if you don't quickly comprehend what a company is doing, then management probably doesn't either.
Ultimately, nothing should be more important to investors than the ability to sleep soundly at night.
We worry top-down, but we invest bottom-up
Typically, we make money when we buy things. We count the profits later, but we know we have captured them when we buy the bargain.
Risk is not inherent in an investment; it is always relative to the price paid. Uncertainty is not the same as risk. Indeed, when great uncertainty - such as in the fall of 2008 - drives securities prices to especially low levels, they often become less risky investments.
The overwhelming majority of people are comfortable with consensus, but successful investors tend to have a contrarian bent.
When all feels calm and prices surge, the markets may feel safe; but, in fact, they are dangerous because few investors are focusing on risk.
Value investors should completely exit a security by the time it reaches full value; owning overvalued securities is the realm of speculators.
We are big fans of fear, and in investing it is clearly better to be scared than sorry.
In a rising market, everyone makes money and a value philosophy is unnecessary. But because there is no certain way to predict what the market will do, one must follow a value philosophy at all times.
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