Whitney Tilson Quotes

If your investing approach requires that you become Nostradamus to succeed, then you are destined to fail.

Investing is a probabilistic business. Every once in a while, it's sort of like you're throwing six-sided dice, and anything except a one or a two, you're doing well. Statistically speaking, you throw the dice enough times, you're going to throw a one or a two five times in a row, and you're going to look pretty foolish, right?

It is important for investors to understand what they do and don't know. Learn to recognize that you cannot possibly know what is going to happen in the future, and any investment plan that is dependent on accurately forecasting where markets will be next year is doomed to failure.

Investing is about making probabilistic decisions with limited information about an unknowable future. The variables are well known, as are the possible outcomes.

Because in the New Normal you are more worried about the return of your capital, not return on your capital.

In the investment business, you must expect to be wrong.

Investing is about predicting the future, and the future is inherently unpredictable. Therefore, the only way you can do better is to assess all the facts and truly know what you know and know what you don't know. That's your probability edge.

Far more money has been lost by investors preparing for corrections, or trying to anticipate corrections, than has been lost in corrections themselves.

Diversification is protection against ignorance. It makes little sense if you know what you are doing.

You could lose hundreds or thousands one day on paper and gain it all back the next, and it has literally no effect on your immediate future, provided the money you have in the market is money you're investing for the long haul (meaning at least three to five years).

For us, whether the market is skewed from a bubble perspective or not really is mitigated by staying focused on what we do best.

We're getting hurt, but I'm a long-term investor.

I've been in real estate for my whole life, I've been trying to sharpshoot the market with my investments, I'm never right. All you need to do is get near the bottom. That's good enough.

The financial markets generally are unpredictable. So that one has to have different scenarios... The idea that you can actually predict what's going to happen contradicts my way of looking at the market.

Owning equities is an essential part of anyone's portfolio. You just can't ignore it over time. It's going to add the real pop to anyone's overall performance.

Markets are constantly in a state of uncertainty and flux and money is made by discounting the obvious and betting on the unexpected.

Investors have to ask themselves two questions. How much can we grow our investments? And, can we afford our mistakes?

I think that I could have been take apart if the bear market continued, but I waited three years before I felt the bear market was over and I was right.

What I'm trying to say is that for the average investor, what I would encourage them to do is to understand that there's inflation and growth. It can go higher and lower and to have four different portfolios essentially that make up your entire portfolio that gets you balanced.

Whenever you hear a discussion about the short-term swings in any given stock's price, your immediate thought should be whether it matters to why you are investing.

I have a million dollars in the stock market, because if I lose a million dollars, I don't personally care.

People often panic when the markets go down and sell off their stocks - but then they aren't in the game when the markets are doing well.

My advice to the average investor in 1988 is to be patient and think long-term. It will take 18 months for confidence to get better and, in the meantime, this is absolutely no place for short-term money.

The beauty of diversification is it's about as close as you can get to a free lunch in investing.

I have no complaints about losing money I put in high-risk investments. I did some of that when I had real money; my informed choice, my measured gamble.