Seth Klarman Quotes

The single greatest edge an investor can have is a long-term orientation.

Value investing is at its core the marriage of a contrarian streak and a calculator.

Ultimately, nothing should be more important to investors than the ability to sleep soundly at night.

The stock market is the story of cycles and of the human behavior that is responsible for overreactions in both directions.

In reality, no one knows what the market will do; trying to predict it is a waste of time, and investing based upon that prediction is a speculative undertaking.

Investment success cannot be captured in a mathematical equation or a computer program.

Patience and discipline can make you look foolishly out of touch until they make you look prudent and even prescient

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.

As Buffett has often observed, value investing is not a concept that can be learned and gradually applied over time. It is either absorbed and adopted at once, or it is never truly learned.

The overwhelming majority of people are comfortable with consensus, but successful investors tend to have a contrarian bent.

There's no such thing as a value company. Price is all that matters. At some price, an asset is a buy, at another it's a hold, and at another it's a sell.

I think markets will never be efficient because of human nature.

Value investing is risk aversion.

Over the long run, the crowd is always wrong.

Macro worries are like sports talk radio. Everyone has a good opinion which probably means that none of them are good.

The avoidance of loss is the surest way to ensure a profitable outcome.

All an investor can do is follow a consistently disciplined and rigorous approach; over time the returns will come

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.

Investing today may well be harder than it has been at any time in our three decades of existence.

When a stock is selling at a discount to liquidation value per share, a near rock-bottom appraisal, it is frequently an attractive investment.

Individual and institutional investors alike frequently demonstrate an inability to make long-term investment decisions based on business fundamentals.

The trick of successful investors is to sell when they want to, not when they have to.

Loss avoidance must be the cornerstone of your investment philosophy.

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.

While knowing how to value businesses is essential for investment success, the first and perhaps most important step in the investment process is knowing where to look for opportunities

Value investors should completely exit a security by the time it reaches full value; owning overvalued securities is the realm of speculators.

Be sure that you are well compensated for illiquidity - especially illiquidity without control - because it can create particularly high opportunity costs.

Graham's wonderful sentence as, an investor needs only two things: cash and courage. Having only one of them is not enough.

The inability to hold cash and the pressure to be fully invested at all times meant that when the plug was pulled out of the tub, all boats dropped as the water rushed down the drain.

We are not so brazen as to believe that we can perfectly calibrate valuation; determining risk and return for any investment remains an art not an exact science

Value investing is predicated on the efficient market hypothesis being wrong.

We worry top-down, but we invest bottom-up

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.

We are big fans of fear, and in investing it is clearly better to be scared than sorry.

The cost of performing well in bad times can be relative underperformance in good times.

In contrast to the speculators preoccupation with rapid gain, value investors demonstrate their risk aversion by striving to avoid loss.

The best protection against risk is knowing what you are doing.

I know of no long-time practitioner who regrets adhering to a value philosophy; few investors who embrace the fundamental principles ever abandon this investment approach for another

Successful investors must temper the arrogance of taking a stand with a large dose of humility, accepting that despite their efforts and care, they may in fact be wrong.

A tipping point is invisible, as we just saw in Greece. In most situations, everything appears fine until it's not fine, until, for example, no one shows up at a Treasury auction.

Avoiding where others go wrong is an important step in achieving investment success. In fact, it almost assures it.

Complexity - limits competition.

We buy expecting to hold a bond to maturity and a stock forever.

Ratings agencies are highly conflicted, unimaginative dupes. They are blissfully unaware of adverse selection and moral hazard. Investors should never trust them.

A simple rule applies: if you don't quickly comprehend what a company is doing, then management probably doesn't either.

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.

In investing it is never wrong to change your mind. It is only wrong to change your mind and do nothing about it.

Sometimes buying early on the way down looks like being wrong, but it isn't.

While it might seem that anyone can be a value investor, the essential characteristics of this type of investor-patience, discipline, and risk aversion-may well be genetically determined.

One must understand the importance of an endless drive to get information and seek value.