If you don't get it ... you don't get it.

The best buys have been when the number almost tell you not to. Then you feel so strongly about the product. Almost every business we bought is takes 5 or 10 minutes in terms of analysis. If you don't know enough to understand the business instantly, a couple months of analysis won't change that too much.

- Warren Buffett

Of tangents and orbits

The extraordinary thing about the securities market, if you judge it over a long period of years, is the fact that it does not go off on tangents permanently, but it remains in continuous orbit.

- Benjamin Graham

Risk in an investment

The risk of an investment is described by both the probability and the potential amount of loss. The risk of an investment-the probability of an adverse outcome-is partly inherent in its very nature. A dollar spent on biotechnology research is a riskier investment than a dollar used to purchase utility equipment. The former has both a greater probability of loss and a greater percentage of the investment at stake.

- Seth Klarman

Long list of securities

Usually a very long list of securities is not a sign of the brilliant investor, but of one who is unsure of himself.

- Philip Fisher 

IPO

An IPO is like a negotiated transaction - the seller chooses when to come public - and it's unlikely to be a time that's favourable to you.

- Warren Buffett

Market prices are biased views

The generally accepted view is that markets are always right -- that is, market prices tend to discount future developments accurately even when it is unclear what those developments are. I start with the opposite view. I believe the market prices are always wrong in the sense that they present a biased view of the future.

- George Soros

Competitive advantage

An organization's ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.


- Jack Welch