Mohnish Pabrai Quotes

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

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).

Do not buy the hype from Wall St. and the press that stocks always go up. There are long periods when stocks do nothing and other investments are better.

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.

If you can predict where the market's going, just do what you can predict. If you can't, which is the presumption of dollar cost averaging or time cost averaging, either one, then you're trying to ease in. But if the market rises more than it falls most of the time, easing in is, by definition, a loser's game.

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.

A hedge fund manager whose clients demand monthly performance reports has different needs than any individual investors with a 20-year time horizon. The needs of that long-term investor differ markedly from someone who is retiring in three years.

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

I never attempt to make money on the stock market. I buy on the assumption that they could close the market the next day and not reopen it for five years.

I don't really like hedging. To me, if something needs to be hedged, you shouldn't have a position in it.

People with 401(k)s need to be very conservative. Picking bottoms should be for insiders and traders.

Dealing with uncertainty is always a key challenge for investors. But dealing with uncertainty doesn't mean avoiding it - on the contrary, it is often fuzziness about a company's future that creates the type of opportunity bargain-hunting investors cherish.

While everyone would love to have that perfect portfolio of stocks that can be bought and held forever, it usually does not work out that way. Markets, technology, and businesses change too quickly to put portfolios on autopilot.

The potential rewards of small-cap investing do not come without risk.

Regardless of what happens in the markets, stick to your investment program. Changing your strategy at the wrong time can be the single most devastating mistake you can make as an investor.

It's in the nature of stock markets to go way down from time to time. There's no system to avoid bad markets. You can't do it unless you try to time the market, which is a seriously dumb thing to do. Conservative investing with steady savings without expecting miracles is the way to go.

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

Confusing speculation with investment is always a mistake.

Thousands of people have tried, and the evidence is clear: The more you trade, the less you keep.

If you're going to invest in an Internet stock, you must be a long-term investor.

In the long run, a portfolio of well chosen stocks and/or equity mutual funds will always outperform a portfolio of bonds or a money-market account. In the long run, a portfolio of poorly chosen stocks won't outperform the money left under the mattress.

Over many decades, our usual practice is that if something we like goes down, we buy more and more. Sometimes something happens, you realize you’re wrong, and you get out. But if you develop correct confidence in your judgment, buy more and take advantage of stock prices.

The advice "you never go broke taking a profit" is foolish.

Funny, but after trading for more than 15 years, I still am capable of forgetting a cardinal rule: The paper you own, in the end, will be intertwined with the fate of the 30-year bond.