Best Klarman Quotes & Sayings

It is crucial in a sound investment process to search a mile wide than a mile deep with they find something - also.. never stop digging for information. — Seth Klarman

Below, we itemize some of the quite different lessons investors seem to have learned as of late 2009 - false lessons, we believe. To not only learn but also effectively implement investment lessons requires a disciplined, often contrary, and long-term-oriented investment approach. It requires a resolute focus on risk aversion rather than maximizing immediate returns, as well as an understanding of history, a sense of financial market cycles, and, at times, extraordinary patience. — Seth Klarman

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

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. — Seth Klarman

investors. I have been a student of the philosophy of value investing, which of course was established, executed, and popularized by superinvestors Benjamin Graham, Warren Buffet, and Seth Klarman among — Sundeep Bajikar

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 — Seth Klarman

It's incredibly important to note that when you don't allow failure, you get more failure. — Seth Klarman

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. — Seth Klarman

Speculators are obsessed with predicting: guessing the direction of stock prices. Every morning on cable television, every afternoon on the stock market report, every weekend in Barron's, every week in dozens of market newsletters, and whenever business people get together. 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 purely speculative undertaking. — Seth Klarman

Almost no one will accept responsibility for his or her role in precipitating a crisis: not leveraged speculators, not willfully blind leaders of financial institutions, and certainly not regulators, government officials, ratings agencies or politicians. — Seth Klarman

You probably would not choose to dine at a restaurant whose chef always ate elsewhere. I do eat my own cooking, and I don't "dine out" when it comes to investing. — Seth Klarman

Literally draw a detailed map-like an organization chart-of interlocking ownership and affiliates, many of which were also publicly traded. So, identifying one stock led him to a dozen other potential investments. To tirelessly pull threads is the lesson that I learned from Mike Price. — Seth Klarman

A value strategy is of little use to the impatient investor since it usually takes time to pay off. — Seth Klarman

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

My view is that an investor is better off knowing a lot about a few investments than knowing a little about each of a great many holdings. One's very best idea's are likely to generate higher returns for a given level of risk than one's hundredth or thousandth best idea. — Seth Klarman

Loss avoidance must be the cornerstone of your investment philosophy. — Seth Klarman

Investors should pay attention not only to whether but also to why current holdings are undervalued. It is critical to know why you have made an investment and to sell when the reason for owning it no longer applies. Look for investments with catalysts that may assist directly in the realization of underlying value. Give reference to companies having good managements with a personal financial stake in the business. Finally, diversify your holdings and hedge when it is financially attractive to do so. — Seth Klarman

People should be highly sceptical of anyone's including their own, ability to predict the future, and instead pursue strategies that can survive whatever may occur. — Seth Klarman

To value investors the concept of indexing is at best silly and at worst quite hazardous. Warren Buffett has observed that "in any sort of a contest - financial, mental or physical - it's an enormous advantage to have opponents who have been taught that it's useless to even try." I believe that over time value investors will outperform the market and that choosing to match it is both lazy and shortsighted. — Seth Klarman

Value in relation to price, not price alone, must determine your investment decisions. If you look to Mr Market as a creator of investment opportunities (where price departs from underlying value), you have the makings of a value investor. If you insist on looking to Mr Market for investment guidance however, you are probably best advised to hire someone else to manage your money. — Seth Klarman

Benjamin Graham wrote, "Those with enterprise haven't the money, and those with money haven't the enterprise, to buy stocks when they are cheap." — Seth Klarman

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

By investing at a discount, Benjamin Graham knew that he was unlikely to experience losses. — Seth Klarman

I find value investing to be a stimulating, intellectually challenging, ever changing, and financially rewarding discipline — Seth Klarman

Great investments don't just knock on the door and say "buy me". — Seth Klarman

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

When people give away stocks based on forced selling or fear that is usually a great opportunity. — Seth Klarman

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

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

Risk is not inherent in an investment; it is always relative to the price paid. Uncertainty is not the same as risk. Indeed, when great uncertainty - such as in the fall of 2008 - drives securities prices to especially low levels, they often become less risky investments. — Seth Klarman

You must buy on the way down. There is far more volume on the way down than on the way back up, and far less competition among buyers. It is almost always better to be too early than too late, but you must be prepared for price markdowns on what you buy. — Seth Klarman

Be focused on process and not outcome — Seth Klarman

Short-term performance envy causes many of the shortcomings that lock most investors into a perpetual cycle of underachievement. Watch your competitors not out of jealousy but out of respect and focus your efforts not on replicating others' portfolios but on looking for opportunities where they are not. The only way for investors to significantly outperform is to periodically stand far apart from the crowd, something few are willing, or able, to do. — Seth Klarman

Successful investors tend to be unemotional, allowing the greed and fear of others to play into their hands. By having confidence in their own analysis and judgement, they respond to market forces not with blind emotion but with calculated reason. Successful investors, for example, demonstrate caution in frothy markets and steadfast conviction in panicky ones. Indeed, the very way an investor views the market and it's price fluctuations is a key factor in his or her ultimate investment success or failure. — Seth Klarman

One thing I want to emphasize is that, like any human being, we can discuss our view of the economy and the market. Fortunately for our clients, we don't tend to operate based on the view. Our investment strategy is to invest bottom up, one stock at a time, based on price compared to value. And while we may have a macro view that things aren't very good right now - which in fact we feel very strongly we will put money to work regardless of that macro view if we find bargains. So tomorrow, if we found half a dozen bargains, we would invest all our cash. — Seth Klarman

There are only a few things investors can do to counteract risk: diversify adequately, hedge when appropriate, and invest with a margin of safety. It is a precisely because we do not and cannot know all the risks of an investment that we strive to invest at a discount. The bargain element helps to provide a cushion for when things go wrong. — Seth Klarman

Be indifferent if you lose your short term clients, remember they are your own worst enemy — Seth Klarman

Value investors will not invest in businesses that they cannot readily understand or ones they find excessively risky. Hence few value investors will own the shares of technology companies. Many also shun commercial banks, which they consider to have unanalyzable assets, as well as property and casualty insurance companies, which have both unanalyzable assets and liabilities. — Seth Klarman