Quotes

The investment counsel business, as it is traditionally practiced, and probably as it should be practiced, is a simple process of making sure that clients never have so much risk exposure that their capital or standard of living can be impaired by some specific negative surprise.

There's an old market saying about stocks to the effect that they all go down together.

Nothing so gives the illusion of intelligence as personal association with large sums of money.

It's natural for people to think their own civilization and their own nation is better than everybody else, but everybody can't be better than everybody else.

Failure will give you a tattoo that will stay with you your whole life, and sometimes it’s a really good thing.

Of all the mysteries of the stock exchange there is none so impenetrable as why there should be a buyer for everyone who seeks to sell. October 24, 1929 showed that what is mysterious is not inevitable. Often there were no buyers, and only wide vertical declines could anyone be induced to bid.

When picking a list of growth stocks for long-term investment, broad diversification of the risk is the first and most important principle to follow. No one can look ahead five or ten years and say what is the most promising industry or the best stock to own.

Investors should seek a company that can lower the cost of production and develop an expanding market without materially reducing the return on capital invested in the business.

Growth stocks are as varied in their characteristics as a surgeon's instruments or a carpenter's tools and, similarly, successful results are dependent on knowledge and experience in their proper use.

While the trend in profit margins is one of the most important factors to consider, it is not always the company which reports the higher profit margin that proves to be the better growth stock.

No mathematical formula or yardstick alone can be relied on for identifying growth stocks or for detecting when their earnings reach maturity.

The two best ways of measuring the life cycle of an industry are unit volume of sales and net earnings available for stockholders.