Jeff Greene Quotes

I've lived through periods of illiquidity before. Asset prices come down. The economy slows or even goes into recession. Then the cycle re-starts. We buy at lower prices with less leverage.

What's so seductive about the efficient markets hypothesis is that it applies nine years out of ten. A lot of the time it works. But when it stops working, you blow up.

For those properly prepared, the bear market is not only a calamity but an opportunity.

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.

I have yet to take capital losses on any company. Then again, it's still early.

The starting point of my career in money management in 1973-74 was the time of the only true bear market any living non-Japanese investor has seen in major markets. Equities, real estate, you name it, everyone got run over.

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

A financial crisis is a great time for professional investors and a horrible time for average ones.

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

Leverage is great when it works, and when it doesn't work, it creates a lot of issues. So I think if you limit the amount of leverage that people can borrow, or that banks can borrow, I think you'll find that you'll have a lot less issues going forward.

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.

Investors have few spare tires left. Think of the image of a car on a bumpy road to an uncertain destination that has already used up its spare tire. The cash reserves of people have been eaten up by the recent market volatility.

What I invest in, while not risky for me, may be too risky for most people.

If nobody can sell mortgage-backed securities based on trillions of dollars of unpayable instruments, there's a lot less risk in the overall system.

When the music stops, in terms of liquidity, things will be complicated. But as long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance. We’re still dancing.

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

Low-volatility funds, which tend to smooth out performance, have been especially popular since the financial crisis. The PowerShares S&P 500 Low Volatility Fund is the oldest, begun in 2011.

In some industries, we refer to risk taking as 'research and development.' At financial institutions, we often take risk by investing in securities.

In an ideal world, you raise a lot of money and then there is a downturn, before you start investing so you get better deals. But it doesn't always happen that way.

You will not see, in my career, the kind of returns this industry had in 2005 and 2006 for a very simple reason - the banks were undercapitalized, and returns are a function of earnings and capital.

I think it is crucial to diversify one's portfolio.

Market risk is like taking a plunge into a cool pool ... a lot of people are finding out right now what their risk tolerance is.

You shouldn't own common stocks if a 50 per cent decrease in their value in a short period of time would cause you acute distress.

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

An irresistable footnote: in 1971, pension fund managers invested a record 122% of net funds available in equities - at full prices they couldn't buy enough of them. In 1974, after the bottom had fallen out, they committed a then record low of 21% to stocks.