Assets required during inflation

The best assets you can have during inflation are your abilities.

- Warren Buffett

Investing the greatest business in the world

"I call investing the greatest business in the world," he says, "because you never have to swing." You stand at the plate, the pitcher throws you General Motors at 47! U.S. Steel at 39! And nobody calls a strike on you. There's no penalty except opportunity lost. All day you wait for the pitch you like; then when the fielders are asleep, you step up and hit it."

- Warren Buffett

Corporate Office

The extravagance of any corporate office is directly proportional to management's reluctance to reward the shareholders.

- Peter Lynch

Applauses & Yawns

Approval, though, is not the goal of investing. In fact, approval is often counter-productive because it sedates the brain and makes it less receptive to new facts or a re-examination of conclusions formed earlier. Beware the investment activity that produces applause; the great moves are usually greeted by yawns.

- Warren Buffett

Why value investing will remain

The foibles of human nature that result in the mass pursuit of instant wealth and effortless gain seem certain to be with us forever. So long as people succumb to this aspect of their natures, value investing will remain, as it has been for 75 years, a sound and low risk approach to successful long term investing.

- Seth Klarman

Estoric terms

Investors should be skeptical of history-based models. Constructed by a nerdy-sounding priesthood using esoteric terms such as beta, gamma, sigma and the like, these models tend to look impressive. Too often, though, investors forget to examine the assumptions behind the symbols. Our advice: Beware of geeks bearing formulas.

- Warren Buffett

US Treasury bond bubble

When the financial history of this decade is written, it will surely speak of the Internet bubble of the late 1990s and the housing bubble of the early 2000s. But the U.S. Treasury bond bubble of late 2008 may be regarded as almost equally extraordinary.

- Warren Buffett

No. of stocks to hold

Hold no more stocks than you can remain informed on.

- Peter Lynch

Capitalism requires a structure

Capitalism requires a structure and a value system that people believe in and can depend on.

- John Bogle

Companies to own

Our long-avowed goal is to be the "buyer of choice" for businesses - particularly those built and owned by families. The way to achieve this goal is to deserve it. That means we must keep our promises; avoid leveraging up acquired businesses; grant unusual autonomy to our managers; and hold the purchased companies through thick and thin (though we prefer thick and thicker).

- Warren Buffett

When to raise money

Remember, you raise money not when you need it, you raise money when it is available.

- Hasmukhbhai T. Parekh

Turn-around

The worse a situation becomes the less it takes to turn it around, the bigger the upside.

- George Soros