A contrarian approach is just as foolish as a follow-the-crowd strategy. What’s required is thinking rather than polling. Unfortunately, Bertrand Russells observation about life in general applies with unusual force in the financial world: Most men would rather die than think. Many do.
– Warren Buffett, 1990 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Letter
These are the days that must happen to you.
– Walt Whitman, Song Of The Open Road
The formula for successful entry is the same for all industries: compete asymmetrically. This means introduce products which change the basis of competition and deter competitive responses by making your goals dissimilar from those of the incumbents. This is classic “ju-jitsu” of disruptive competition.
CEOs always act on leading indicators of good news, but only act on lagging indicators of bad news. In order to build anything great, you have to be an optimist, because by definition you are trying to do something that most people would consider impossible. Optimists most certainly do not listen to leading indicators of bad news.
You own the cheap stock, it becomes the target of a deal, you do the arbitrage, they screw up the deal, it becomes a bankruptcy, and you play that. We don’t forget the companies we trade in. We try to watch the companies over all parts of that cycle. We watch the acquisitions, we think about whether they’re sensible, and we don’t lose track.
– Michael Price, The Vulture Investors
All intelligent investing is value investing — acquiring more that you are paying for. You must value the business in order to value the stock.
Clear thinking becomes clear writing; one can’t exist without the other. It’s impossible for a muddy thinker to write good English.
– William Zinsser, On Writing Well
If all your colleagues have tried to demonstrate that something’s true and failed, it might be because that thing is not true.
