Investment Outcome Quotes

Time is the friend of the wonderful business. It's the enemy of the lousy business. If you're in a lousy business for a long time, you're going to get a lousy result, even if you buy it cheap. If you're in a wonderful business for a long time, even if you pay a little too much going in, you're going to get a wonderful result if you stay in a long time.

You don't need to be a rocket scientist. Investing is not a game where the guy with the 160 IQ beats the guy with 130 IQ.

The deeper one delves, the worse things look for actively managed funds.

I told all of our original investors that they would lose their money for sure.

The grim irony of investing, then, is that we investors as a group not only don't get what we pay for, we get precisely what we don't pay for. So if we pay for nothing, we get everything.

Well, the most important thing in investing is to know what you're investing in, and if you're confident in the outcome, it's important to stay true to your position.

But in the business I had, we invested in over 100 different businesses and net-net, taking out the ones where we lost jobs and those that we added, those businesses have now added over 100,000 jobs.

Wesco had a market capitalization of $40 million when we bought it [in the early 1970s]. It's $2 billion now. It's been a long slog to a perfectly respectable outcome - not as good as Berkshire Hathaway or Microsoft, but there's always someone in life who's done better.

I've seen a lot more go to zero than infinity.

I hope that's what the taxpayers of Great Britain expect, is expect us to, when we make investments in countries, that they work. And they don't work if a nation doesn't invest in its people.

Ultimately, we measure ourselves on the success of our investments.

What you pay for an investment is the single biggest determinant for how successful that investment will be. When equity prices are high, your returns will be lower. When they are cheap, your returns will be higher.

If you look at all the investments made during 'Dragons' Den,' the ratio of those that make it to those that don't is actually extremely high.

Any dope with a checkbook can buy a company. It's what you do afterward that matters.

If you start spending big money, what you're ultimately judged on is how your buys perform.