Whitney Tilson Quotes

Everyone has the idea of owning good companies. The problem is that they have high prices in relations to assets and earnings, and that takes all of the fun out of the game.

I want attractive stocks that will benefit from persistent institutional buying pressure.

When buying shares, ask yourself, would you buy the whole company?

Warren Buffett is famous for talking about the 'intrinsic value' of stocks. But while many people parrot this phrase, few know what it really means.

Time is on your side when you own shares of superior companies.

Buy into good, well-researched companies and then wait. Let's call it a sit-on-your-hands investment strategy.

Since we try and take a fairly buy-and-hold approach to our newsletter portfolios and don't sell at every whipsaw, we want to have a mix of stocks that will perform at both ends of the oscillation.

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.

It's far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price.

When it comes to valuation, there's only one thing stock investors really care about, which is earnings.

The market is often stupid, but you can't focus on that. Focus on the underlying value of dividends and earnings.

Invest in good, solid companies in good sectors.

The consequences of overestimating a company and your ability to analyse it are greatly diminished when you're paying a lot less for it than your analysis shows it is worth.

We call ourselves 'opportunistic value investors.'

If you buy something because it's undervalued, then you have to think about selling it when it approaches your calculation of its intrinsic value. That's hard. But if you buy a few great companies, then you can sit on your ass. That's a good thing.

Early in my career, we were just pure bottoms-up stock pickers.

Much like Warren Buffett has said very famously - he doesn't buy technology stocks because he doesn't understand them- I will not buy consumer goods companies because I do not understand them.

Stock market goes up or down, and you can't adjust your portfolio based on the whims of the market, so you have to have a strategy in a position and stay true to that strategy and not pay attention to noise that could surround any particular investment.

Volatility is not something that is a great fit for Duke if you look at the level of dividend we pay.

There is a natural tendency for investors to devote a significant majority of their time to finding new ideas. After all, uncovering great companies selling at great prices is the lifeblood of successful investing. But in the never-ending quest for the next great idea, investors often give short shrift to their existing investments.

While I take no pleasure in others' misfortunes, we've historically made most of our profits from other investors behaving in a panicked and irrational fashion and selling us certain stocks at prices far below their intrinsic value. More volatility equals cheaper stocks, which equals higher returns.

The whole concept of dividing it up into 'value' and 'growth' strikes me as twaddle. It's convenient for a bunch of pension fund consultants to get fees prattling about and a way for one advisor to distinguish himself from another. But, to me, all intelligent investing is value investing.

We have usually made our best purchases when apprehensions about some macro event were at a peak. Fear is the foe of the faddist, but the friend of the fundamentalist.

If you aren't willing to own a stock for ten years, don't even think about owning it for ten minutes. Put together a portfolio of companies whose aggregate earnings march upward over the years, and so also will the portfolio's market value.

Investment philosophy is the clear understanding that by owning shares of stocks he owns businesses, not pieces of paper.