Mark Victor Hansen Quotes

The liabilities are always 100 percent good. It's the assets you have to worry about.

It's our contention that equity may be in the money, depending on where the liabilities lie.

Rule One. You must know the difference between an asset and a liability, and buy assets. An asset is something that puts money in my pocket. A liability is something that takes money out of my pocket.

For business owners, there are many important documents to learn to read. One of the most important is the profit and loss statement, known as the P&L, and the balance sheet.

One of the problems with hedge funds is that they are changing so rapidly. If you have the balance sheet that closed business last night, by 11 A.M. this morning, that won't tell you very much about what they're doing.

Companies always have a balance sheet of its assets, but counties do not.

As well as, we know, as a real estate developer, [Donald Trump] has hundreds of millions of dollars in debt, in loans.

[My wife] has some investments and stuff.

For most businesses, America is the most important asset on their balance sheet.

Everyone caved, adopted loose [accounting] standards, and created exotic derivatives linked to theoretical models. As a result, all kinds of earnings, blessed by accountants, are not really being earned. When you reach for the money, it melts away. It was never there. It [accounting for derivatives] is just disgusting. It is a sewer, and if I'm right, there will be hell to pay in due course. All of you will have to prepare to deal with a blow-up of derivative books.

You can't really invest in your looks as the only thing because it's a depreciating asset. It's like putting money into a stock that's going down.

You need to really scrub your investment portfolios, because I guarantee you, many of you are going to find them chock-full of subprime carbon assets.

Owning stocks is like having children - don't get involved with more than you can handle.

There's nothing as short as short-term debt.

You have to know accounting. It's the language of practical business life. It was a very useful thing to deliver to civilization. I've heard it came to civilization through Venice which of course was once the great commercial power in the Mediterranean. However, double entry bookkeeping was a hell of an invention.

Invest in as much of yourself as you can, you are your own biggest asset by far.

Property is my major investment. My accountant has put money into various long-term savings arrangements. To be honest, I am a bit vague about all that stuff.

To mistake money for wealth, is the same sort of error as to mistake the highway which may be the easiest way of getting to your house or lands, for the house and lands themselves.

Derivative trading with mark-to-market accounting degenerates into mark-to-model. Two firms make a big derivative trade and the accountants on both sides show a large profit from the same trade.

[With] closet indexing....you're paying a manager a fortune and he has 85% of his assets invested parallel to the indexes. If you have such a system, you're being played for a sucker.

Yellen’s comments suggest, and I agree, that we are in an asset bubble.

There's never any great risk as long as you have money.

Our trend in the privatization process and gradual withdrawal of the state from certain assets remains unchanged.

Your most important asset is the conscious control of your own life.

Once you start making money you have to put things into perspective.