David Bonderman Quotes

If there's a recession, I'd buy stocks. That's when you make money: when markets are spooked.

I buy when other people are selling.

Investing is a business where you can look very silly for a long period of time before you are proven right.

I think there will be no government bankruptcy in Greece.

I have 13 bankers in my office, and they say that if you go forward with this you will cause the worst financial crisis since World War II.

Invest at the point of maximum pessimism.

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

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

I'd rather buy something that is relatively depressed than something that is relatively high.

Never, never try to scope the market.

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.

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.

Don't bottom fish.

The way to make money is to buy when blood is running in the streets.

As a bull market turns into a bear market, the new pros turn into optimists, hoping and praying the bear market will become a bull and save them. But as the market remains bearish, the optimists become pessimists, quit the profession, and return to their day jobs. This is when the real professional investors re-enter the market.

People come in. They are too gung ho. They invest too much money in things they don't know. They lose it and then they clam up and stop investing. Then they miss the actual boom. That's the nature of the market.

A rule of thumb is that the best investors focus on losers, and the winners take care of themselves.

My advice to most people is don't short stocks. It's a very, very difficult business. And you can really get clobbered.

Just because a company's future is highly uncertain doesn't mean an investment in it is risky. In fact, some of the best potential investments are highly uncertain but have little risk of permanent capital loss.

Buy when there's blood in the streets, even if the blood is your own.

I put heavy weight on certainty. It's not risky to buy securities at a fraction of what they're worth.

When investing, pessimism is your friend, euphoria the enemy.

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.

Most people get interested in stocks when everyone else is. The time to get interested is when no one else is. You can't buy what is popular and do well.

Of course if you happen to time the market really well, you can make more money with some of these smaller companies, but for someone with no exposure I wouldn't want to take the risk that they timed it wrong.