Quotes & Sayings About Securities

The true secret of success in the investment and speculative world is not so much which good securities to buy, but rather which investments to avoid. — Morton Shulman

You normally don't get a margin call unless your securities, minus the debt, are worth 30% or less of their nominal market value. — Jane Bryant Quinn

We were not foolish enough to try to make a currency [backed by] gold of which we had none, but for every mark that was issued we required the equivalent of a mark's worth of work done or goods produced ... we laugh at the time our national financiers held the view that the value of a currency is regulated by the gold and securities lying in the vaults of a state bank. — Adolf Hitler

To trust God when we have securities in our iron chest is easy, but not thankworthy; but to depend on him for what we cannot see, as it is more hard for man to do, so it is more acceptable to God. — Owen Feltham

Risk managers and investment bankers and actually, all kinds of investors took on more risk than they expected. So there was a failure of risk management. There was a failure to recognize how much risk there was in some of these securities that people bought. — Robert F. Engle

The underlying factor here is the tendency of the security markets to undervalue issues that are involved in any sort of complicated legal proceedings. An old Wall Street motto has been: "Never buy into a lawsuit." This may be sound advice to the speculator seeking quick action on his holdings. But the adoption of this attitude by the general public is bound to create bargain opportunities in the securities affected by it, since the prejudice against them holds their prices down to unduly low levels.* — Benjamin Graham

The notion of mental accounts is absent in traditional economic theory, which holds that wealth in general, and money in particular, should be fungible: That is, $100 in roulette winnings, $100 in salary, and a $100 tax refund should have the same significance and value to you, since each C-note could buy the same number of downloads from iTunes or the same number of burgers at McDonald's. Likewise, $100 kept under the mattress should invoke the same feelings or sense of wealth as $100 in a bank account or $100 in U.S. Treasury securities (ignoring the fact that money in the bank, or in T-bills, is safer than cash under the bed). If money and wealth are fungible, there should be no difference in the way we spend gambling winnings or salary. — Gary Belsky

For Randy Neugebauer, the Texas Republican who chairs the investigations subcommittee, the top sources of funding for his 2012 reelection campaign are from the insurance, banking, finance, securities and real estate industries. — Gary Weiss

However, if one has been playing the buy-and-hold game with quality securities, one has been exposed to a substantial amount of market risk because the valuations placed on these securities have implied overly rosy scenarios prone to popular revision in times of more realistic expectation. This is one of those times, but it is my feeling that the revisions have not been severe enough, the expectations not yet realistic enough. Hence, the world's best companies largely remain overpriced in the marketplace. — Michael Burry

Securities, certitudes and peace do not lead to discoveries. — Carl Jung

Securities based on risky mortgages are what toppled financial institutions but it was the government that made the mortgages risky in the first place, by making home-ownership statistics the holy grail, for which everything else was to be sacrificed, including commonsense standards for making home loans. — Thomas Sowell

Caution is crediting, and reserve in speaking, and in revealing one's self to but very few, are the best securities both of a good understanding with the world, and of the inward peace of our own minds. — Thomas A Kempis

Buffett's uncommon urge to chronicle made him a unique character in American life, not only a great capitalist but the Great Explainer of American capitalism. He taught a generation how to think about business, and he showed that securities were not just tokens like the Monopoly flatiron, and that investing need not be a game of chance. It was also a logical, commonsensical enterprise, like the tangible businesses beneath. He stripped Wall Street of its mystery and rejoined it to Main Street
a mythical or disappearing place, perhaps, but one that is comprehensible to the ordinary American. — Roger Lowenstein

Buying and selling securities on the Stock Exchange do not start new industries. Big business never starts anything new. It merely absorbs, consolidates and profits at the expense of others. — Franklin D. Roosevelt

There is only one institution that can arrogate to itself the power legally to trade by means of rubber checks: the government. And it is the only institution that can mortgage your future without your knowledge or consent: government securities (and paper money) are promissory notes on future tax receipts, i.e., on your future production. — Ayn Rand

Why should the court impose a judgment in a case in which the SEC alleges a serious securities fraud, but the defendant neither admits nor denies wrongdoing? — Jed S. Rakoff

Security isn't securities. It's knowing that someone cares whether you are or cease to be. — Malcolm Forbes

$16 billion in complex securities whose value ultimately turned on the ability of a Las Vegas stripper with five investment properties, or a Mexican strawberry picker with a single $750,000 home, to make rapidly rising interest payments. — Michael Lewis

Life is defined more by its contrasts than its samenesses; Life is defined more by its risks than the many securities. — Mary Anne Radmacher

Our public life is largely premised on an exploitation of our common anxiety. The advertising of consumerism and the drives of the acquisitive society, like he serpent, seduce into believing there are securities apart from the reality of God. — Walter Brueggemann

When the Securities & Exchange Commission settled securities-fraud charges against Richard Harriton, former chairman of the clearing subsidiary of Bear, Stearns & Co., there were smiles all around. The SEC was happy. Harriton was happy. Bear Stearns was happy. — Gary Weiss

Just as the financial crisis was incubated when unaccountable bank executives created a culture of rewarding short-term profits without wanting to know the ugly details about their mortgage-backed securities, so too does medicine's lack of accountability create an institutional culture that fosters overtreating and runaway costs. — Martin Makary

Not all good works can turn a profit, but profits can be directed toward good. As Warren Buffett explains, "I've worked in an economy that rewards someone who saves the lives of others on a battlefield with a medal, rewards a great teacher with thank-you notes from parents, but rewards those who can detect the mispricing of securities with sums reaching into the billions. — William D. Eggers

The dirty little secret of what used to be known as Wall Street securities firms-Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, and Bear Stearns-was that every one of them funded their business in this way to varying degress, and every one of them was always just twenty-four hours away from a funding crisis. The key to day-to-day survival was the skill with which Wall Street executives managed their firms' ongoing reputation in the marketplace ... — William D. Cohan

We will prosper or suffer in controlled investments in relation to the operating performances of our businesses - we will not attempt to profit by playing various games in the securities markets. — Warren Buffett

What the mortgage bubble was all about was big banks like Goldman Sachs taking big bundles of subprime mortgages that were lent out largely to low-income, highly risky borrowers, and applying this kind of magic-pixie-dust math to these bundles of securities and slapping AAA ratings on them. — Matt Taibbi

In that, we agreed with Andrew Carnegie, who said that huge fortunes that flow in large part from society should in large part be returned to society. In my case, the ability to allocate capital would have had little utility unless I lived in a rich, populous country in which enormous quantities of marketable securities were traded and were sometimes ridiculously mispriced. And fortunately for me, that describes the U.S. in the second half of the last century. — Warren Buffett

I put heavy weight on certainty. It's not risky to buy securities at a fraction of what they're worth. — Warren Buffett

In fact, what's been happening is that there's been a flow of investor funds to the United States, to Treasury securities, which are regarded as a safe haven now, which has a mixed effect for the United States.3 It tends over time to raise the value of the dollar and harm exports. So it's not good for a healthy economy. — Noam Chomsky

In expectation of his demise, a successful businessman may sell out to his competitors to prepare his estate with readily marketable securities, such as U.S. Treasury bonds. The confiscatory death tax eliminates many family enterprises and promotes the growth of giant corporations. — Hans F. Sennholz

Hamilton used the sinking fund to maintain the confidence of creditors in the government's securities; he had no intention of paying off the outstanding principal of the debt. Retiring the debt would only destroy its usefulness as money and as a means of attaching investors to the federal government. — Gordon S. Wood

As I have mentioned before, we cannot make the same sort of money out of permanent ownership of controlled businesses that can be made from buying and reselling such businesses, or from skilled investment in marketable securities. Nevertheless, they offer a pleasant long term form of activity (when conducted in conjunction with high grade, able people) at satisfactory rates of return. — Warren Buffett

The first symptom of the trouble appeared when Madison studied Hamilton's proposal for the funding of the domestic debt. On the one hand, Hamilton's recommendation looked straightforward: All citizens who owned government securities should be reimbursed at par - that is, the full value of the government's original promise. But many original holders of the securities, mainly veterans of the American Revolution who had received them as pay for their service in the war, had then sold them at a fraction of their original value to speculators. What's more, the release of Hamilton's plan produced ... — Joseph J. Ellis

We've got the emPHAsis on the wrong sylLAble when it comes to crime in this country. The FBI says burglary and robbery cost U.S. taxpayers $3.8 billion annually. Securities fraud alone costs four times that. And securities fraud is nothing to the cost of oil spills, price-fixing, and dangerous or defective products. Fraud by health-care corporations alone costs us between $100 billion and $400 billion a year. No three-strikes-and-you're-out for these guys. Remember the S&L scandal? $500 billion. — Molly Ivins

There is nothing that we can properly call our own but our time, and yet everybody fools us out of it who has a mind to do it. If a man borrows a paltry sum of money, there must needs be bonds and securities, and every common civility is presently charged upon account. But he who has my time thinks he owes me nothing for it, though it be a debt that gratitude itself can never repay. — Seneca The Younger

Any great artist is wrestling with their sadness and loneliness, their fears, anxieties and securities, and they're transfiguring those into complicated forms of expression that affect our hearts, minds and souls and remind us of who we are as human beings, the fragility of our human status and the inevitability of death. — Cornel West

The collateralized debt obligation, the CDO, is a structure which allows you to more or less continuously choose how much risk you want to take in a whole batch of securities. And the reason why they got us into so much trouble is that it's hard to figure out how much risk you really are taking. — Robert F. Engle

I've got a huge, huge position in mortgage-backed securities. I started accumulating them in 2009, when the market was really down and things were really scary. — Jeff Greene

I have a feeling-as compelling as a religious conviction-that if industry will constantly pass on to the worker and the customer all the savings of labor-saving machinery and invention, rather than siphon them off into the pools of watered securities, it will by that process keep distribution and production in balance and go as far toward Utopia as our poor human natures will go or be driven. — Samuel B. Pettengill

The chief losses to investors come from the purchase of low-quality securities at times of favorable business conditions. — Benjamin Graham

When He was challenged by Jesus to accept a life of voluntary poverty, the rich young man knew he was faced with the simple alternative of obedience or disobedience. When Levi was called from the receipt of custom and Peter from his nets, there was no doubt that Jesus meant business. Both of them were to leave everything and follow. Again, when Peter was called to walk on the rolling sea, he had to get up and risk his life. Only one thing was required in each case-to rely on Christ's word, and cling to it as offering greater security than all the securities in the world. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Buying and selling securities in an attempt to outperform the market will effectively be a game of chance rather than skill. — Kenneth Eade

If we assume that there are normal or standard income results to be obtained from investing money in securities, then the role of the adviser can be more readily established. He will use his superior training and experience to protect his clients against mistakes and to make sure that they obtain the results to which their money is entitled. — Benjamin Graham

What turned me on then, and turns me on even today - and when the time comes from me to retire from management I think I'd still be interested in it - is that everything that happens in the world affects the price of securities. — Sanford I. Weill

There's a tendency to look at investments in isolation. Investors focus on the risk of individual securities. — Daniel Kahneman

My career in academic research has not been involved with active management of securities. I've tried to understand risk-and-return relationships; also the pricing of derivative securities. — Myron Scholes

[C]ritics of Canadian securities regulators sometimes point out that a number of high-profile US securities cases have resulted in prison sentences for the offenders, while incarceration for Canadian securities law violators seems very rare...[A]s has often been noted, incarceration is far more frequent in the United States for crimes of all kinds, yet it is not usually suggested that this is proof that the United States is generally a safer place to live than Canada. — Paul Halpern

Refusing the false securities of a stable and linear past, such an approach celebrates heterogeneous sensations and surprising associations, random connections, the ongoing construction of meaning and also admits into its orbit the mysterious agency of artifacts, space and non-humans from the past. — Tim Edensor

We say we are trying to buy into businesses with excellent economics, run by honest and able people at a decent price. We buy very few securities, so we look at it as "focused" investing. — Warren Buffett

During my undergraduate training at UCLA, I was studying finance and securities; my particular interest was with mutual funds. Wanting to get into a high position at some of the companies that were doing that, I knew that law would be useful. — Robert Shapiro

I've had a terrific life, from building one company to be the second largest company in the securities industry and merging that into American Express, and becoming president of that company. — Sanford I. Weill

Finance is concerned with the relations between the values of securities and their risk, and with the behavior of those values. It aspires to be a practical, like physics or chemistry or electrical engineering. As John Maynard Keynes once remarked about economics, "If economists could manage to get themselves thought of as humble, competent people on a level with dentists, that would be splendid." Dentists rely on science, engineering, empirical knowledge, and heuristics, and there are no theorems in dentistry. Similarly, one would hope that nance would be concerned with laws rather than theorems, with behavior rather than assumptions. One doesn't seriously describe the behavior of a market with theorems. — Emanuel Derman

Change means traveling in uncharted waters and this causes our securities to rise. — John C. Maxwell

I think my securities far outweigh my insecurities. I am not nearly as afraid of myself and my imagination as I used to be. — Billy Connolly

It is incumbent on us to facilitate the development of a market structure that best assures that these changes benefit the U.S. securities markets as a whole. — Arthur Levitt

One way to ease liquidity for banks is that the government can buy all highly rated securities held by the banks. Every single bank in the U.A.E. has some sovereign debts in their portfolios. I am not asking them to buy any junk bonds, rather the high quality U.A.E. government debt. — Abdul Aziz Al Ghurair

The determining trait of the enterprising (or active, or aggressive) investor is his willingness to devote time and care to the selection of securities that are both sound and more attractive than the average. — Benjamin Graham

Make the financial industry pay for its mistakes. That's the idea behind the best of the Obama administration's reform proposals: If banks issue securities backed by mortgages, say, then require them to hold some of that paper so that they will bear some of the losses. — David Ignatius

Ever since the 2008 global financial crisis, central banks had ventured, not by choice but by necessity, ever deeper into the unfamiliar and tricky terrain of "unconventional monetary policies." They floored interest rates, heavily intervened in the functioning of markets, and pursued large-scale programs that outcompeted one another in purchasing securities in the marketplace; to top it all off, they aggressively sought to manipulate investor expectations and portfolio decisions. — Mohamed A El-Erian

In the United States, securities markets are much more developed than they are in Europe. — Robert C. Solomon

1. Keep speculation and investments separate.
2. Don't be fooled by a name.
3. Be wary of new promotions.
4. Give due consideration to market ability.
5. Don't buy without proper facts.
6. Safeguard purchases through diversification.
7. Don't try to diversify by buying different securities of the same company.
8. Small companies should be carefully scrutinized.
9. Buy adequate security, not super abundance.
10. Choose your dealer and buy outright. (Babson abhorred any type of margin or installment payment plans and, in fact, claimed he never borrowed money.) — Kenneth L. Fisher

The Treasury Department would use the interest from these securities to hire U.S. companies to build Saudi Arabia - new cities, new infrastructure - which we've done. — John Perkins

There you stand, lost in the infinite series of the sea, with nothing ruffled but the waves. The tranced ship indolently rolls; the drowsy trade winds blow; everything resolves you into languor. For the most part, in this tropic whaling life, a sublime uneventfulness invests you; you hear no news; read no gazettes; extras with startling accounts of commonplaces never delude you into unnecessary excitements; you hear of no domestic afflictions; bankrupt securities; fall of stocks; are never troubled with the thought of what you shall have for dinner - for all your meals for three years and more are snugly stowed in casks, and your bill of fare is immutable. (Moby Dick chap 35 p 153) — Herman Melville

The idea was to reinvent mortgages by bundling thousands of them together as the backing for new and alluring securities that could be sold as alternatives to traditional government and corporate bonds - in short, to convert mortgages into bonds. — Niall Ferguson

There are hundreds of reasons for Daniel and me
to be impossible. History has not been kind
to two boys who love each other like we do.
But putting that aside. And not even considering
the fact that a hundred and fifty years ago,
his family was in a small town in Russia
and my family was in a similarly small town
in Ireland- I can't imagine they could have
imagined us here, together. Forgetting our gender,
ignoring all the strange roads that led to us
being in the same time and place, there is still
the simple impossibility of love. That all of our
contradicting securities and insecurities,
interests and disinterests, beliefs and doubts,
could somehow translate into this common
uncommon affection should be as impossible
as walking to the moon. But instead, I love him. — David Levithan

Life in God should be a daring adventure of love - a continuous journey of putting aside our securities to enter more profoundly into the uncharted depths of God. Too often, however, we settle for mediocrity. We follow the rules and practices of prayer but we are unwilling or, for various reasons, unable to give ourselves totally to God. To settle on the plain of mediocrity is really to settle for something less than God that leaves the heart restless and unfulfilled. A story from the desert fathers reminds us that giving oneself wholly to God can make a difference: Abba Lot went to see Abba Joseph and said to him, "Abba, as far as I can I say my little office, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, I live in peace and as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do?" Then the old man stood up and stretched his hands towards heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he said to him, "If you will, you can become all flame."15 — Ilia Delio

Let the corporations do as they please
pillage the environment, falsify their advertising, rig the securities markets
and it is none of the federal government's business to interfere with the will of heaven. — Lewis H. Lapham

What goes on in Europe concerns us greatly because, if Europe comes apart, the E.U. comes apart, then you're going to have enormous impact on America, that's a very big trading partner of ours, and people own securities around the world in this day and age. — Michael Bloomberg

If we're talking about buying exchanges abroad, we have to have global securities standards, as we have global banking regulations. I'm talking about margins. Now, the United States has certain margin requirements that are not the same in London. Investors and hedge funds that want to borrow more money against securities ? if they can't in the U.S., they go abroad. That could add additional risks to the global economy. — Muriel Siebert

Carl Friedrich Gauss, often rated the greatest mathematician of all time, played the market. On a salary of 1,000 thalers a year, Euler left an estate of 170,587 thalers in cash and securities. Nothing is known of Gauss's investment methods. — William Poundstone

The right and the physical power of the people to resist injustice, are really the only securities that any people ever can have for their liberties. Practically no government knows any limit to its power but the endurance of the people. — Lysander Spooner

Although the Internet makes it seem as if you have a direct connection to the securities market, you don't. Lines may clog; systems may break; orders may back-up. — Arthur Levitt

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

For seven years after college, I was a waitress at the Buttercup Bakery in Berkeley, and from there I got a job at Merrill Lynch as an account executive, from where I went to vice president of investments for Prudential-Bache Securities. I started my own firm in 1987. — Suze Orman

My research interests since then have shifted strongly towards the economic and regulatory problems of the financial services industry, and especially of the securities and options exchanges. — Merton Miller

The history of taxation shows that taxes which are inherently excessive are not paid. The high rates inevitably put pressure upon the taxpayer to withdraw his capital from productive business and invest it in tax-exempt securities or to find other lawful methods of avoiding the realization of taxable income. The result is that the sources of taxation are drying up; wealth is failing to carry its share of the tax burden; and capital is being diverted into channels which yield neither revenue to the Government nor profit to the people. — Andrew Mellon

Week of taverns soon qualified him for another year of night-cellars. Such was the life of Savage, of Boyse, and of a crowd of others. Sometimes blazing in gold-laced hats and waistcoats; sometimes lying in bed because their coats had gone to pieces, or wearing paper cravats because their linen was in pawn; sometimes drinking Champagne and Tokay with Betty Careless; sometimes standing at the window of an eating-house in Porridge island, to snuff up the scent of what they could not afford to taste; they knew luxury; they knew beggary; but they never knew comfort. These men were irreclaimable. They looked on a regular and frugal life with the same aversion which an old gipsy or a Mohawk hunter feels for a stationary abode, and for the restraints and securities of civilised communities. They were as untameable, as much wedded to their desolate freedom, as the wild ass. — Samuel Johnson

While markets are supposed to ensure transparency by showing orders to everyone simultaneously, flash orders are currently allowed because of a loophole in securities regulations that allows for immediate trades. — Charles Duhigg

As soon as Mr. Roosevelt took office, the Federal Reserve began to buy government securities at the rate of ten million dollars a week for 10 weeks, and created one hundred million dollars in new [checkbook] currency, which alleviated the critical famine of money and credit, and the factories started hiring people again. — Eustace Mullins

There's only one thing that all of the central banks control and that is the base, their own liability, and they can control that in various ways. They can control it directly by open market operations, buying and selling government securities or other assets, for example, buying and selling gold, or they can control it indirectly by altering the rate at which banks lend to one another. — Milton Friedman

The president has great confidence in him because he made his pile, has invested all his money in Government securities and knows all of the tricks of the trade. Apparently he is going on the assumption that Kennedy would now like to make a name for himself for the sake of his family, but I have never known many of these cases to work out as expected."29 — Richard E. Farley

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

A young financial writer once brought ridicule upon himself by stating that a certain company had nothing to commend it except excellent earnings. Well, there are companies whose earnings are excellent but whose stocks I would never recommend. In selecting investments, I attach prime importance to the men behind them. I'd rather buy brains and character than earnings. Earnings can be good one year and poor the next. But if you put your money into securities run by men combining conspicuous brains and unimpeachable character, the likelihood is that the financial results will prove satisfactory. — B.C. Forbes

Madoff Securities is the world's largest Ponzi scheme. — Harry Markopolos

Company may not a) trade in stock or other securities while in possession of material nonpublic information or b) pass on material nonpublic information to others without express authorization by the Company or recommend to others that they trade in stock or other securities based on material nonpublic information. The Company has adopted guidelines designed to implement this policy. All employees are expected to review — Anonymous

We certainly had an upheaval at the start of the Great Depression, and that resulted in a lot of financial reform, but it wasn't done in one stroke, and it wasn't done immediately. The Depression was in 1929 and resulted in the Securities and Exchange Act of '33, '34, '35, '37, '39, and '41. — Lloyd Blankfein

I have this theory," says Andy Stone, seated in his office at Prudential-Bache Securities. "Wall Street makes its best producers into
managers. The reward for being a good producer is to be made a
manager. The best producers are cutthroat, competitive, and often
neurotic and paranoid. You turn those people into managers, and they go
after each other. They no longer have the outlet for their instincts that
producing gave them. They usually aren't well suited to be managers.
Half of them get thrown out because they are bad. Another quarter get
muscled out because of politics. The guys left behind are just the most
ruthless of the bunch. That's why there are cycles on Wall Street - why
Salomon Brothers is getting crunched now - because the ruthless people
are bad for the business but can only be washed out by proven failure. — Michael Lewis

There is no useful information contained in historical price movements of securities. — Louis Bachelier

Of the maxims of orthodox finance none, surely, is more anti-social than the fetish of liquidity, the doctrine of that it is a positive virtue on the part of investment institutions to concentrate their resources upon the holding of 'liquid' securities. It forgets that there is no such thing as liquidity of investment for the community as a whole. — John Maynard Keynes

Glass-Steagall was an act of the US Congress, but it worked more like an act of God. It cleaved mankind in two. With it, in 1934, American lawmakers had stripped investment banking out from commercial banking. Investment bankers now underwrote securities, such as stocks and bonds. Commercial bankers, like Citibank, took deposits and made loans. The act, in effect, created the investment banking profession, the single most important event in the history of the world, or so I was led to believe. — Michael Lewis

When all of our idols are taken away, all our securities and defense mechanisms,
we find out who we really are. We're so little, so poor, so emptyand a shock to ourselves. But the Biblical God takes away our shame,
and we are eventually able to present ourselves in an honest and humble form.
Then we find out who we really are and who God is for usand it is more than enough. That is how an enslaved people became God's people, Israel. — Aaron Lines

The power of perpetuating our property in our families is one of the most valuable and interesting circumstances belonging to it, and that which tends most to the perpetuation of society itself. It makes our weakness subservient to our virtue; it grafts benevolence even upon avarice. The possession of family wealth and of the distinction which attends hereditary possessions (as most concerned in it,) are the natural securities for this transmission. — Edmund Burke

America has invested her religion as well as her morality in sound income-paying securities. She has adopted the unassailable position of a nation blessed because it deserves to be blessed; and her sons, whatever other theologies they may affect or disregard, subscribe unreservedly to this national creed. — Agnes Repplier

We're going after the possibilities of tax fraud, insurance fraud, securities fraud. We're going to look at this stuff very closely. We have the jurisdiction, we have the resources, and we have the will. — Eric Schneiderman

[A]lthough there are many arguments that strongly support the establishment of a national securities regulator in Canada, it is not entirely clear that the regulatory response to the ABCP meltdown is among them. — Paul Halpern

A margin of safety is achieved when securities are purchased at prices sufficiently below underlying value to allow for human error, bad luck, or extreme volatility in a complex, unpredictable and rapidly changing world. — Seth Klarman

Apple raised $17 billion in a bond offering in 2013. Not to invest in new products or business lines, but to pay a dividend to stockholders. The company is awash with cash, but much of that money is overseas, and there would be a tax charge if it were repatriated to the USA. For many other companies, the tax-favoured status of debt relative to equity encourages financial engineering. Most large multinational companies have corporate and financial structures of mind-blowing complexity. The mechanics of these arrangements, which are mainly directed at tax avoidance or regulatory arbitrage, are understood by only a handful of specialists. Much of the securities issuance undertaken by Goldman Sachs was not 'helping companies to grow' but represented financial engineering of the kind undertaken at Apple. What — John Kay

"[Lawyers who file class-action securities suits] is not a group you would want to marry into your family. "That said, more than half the time the people being sued by the Lerach firm are guilty of outrageous conduct. The problem is, they don't mind (suing) the other half. They are an equal opportunity litigator." — Charlie Munger

Once I really got into securities fraud prosecutions, I came to realize how central they were to the maintenance of a free market and how, in many ways, they are far more important to the welfare of our society than many of the more sensational criminal cases that one hears about. — Jed S. Rakoff

I found that options traders - the Amex was mainly an options exchange - routinely conspired to keep as wide as possible the spreads between the prices investors paid and the prices floor traders paid for the same securities. — Gary Weiss