Investment Research Quotes

Successful investing is all about common sense.

One of the rules I've learned is that struggling to try and think your way into making an investment is usually the best way to not have a great outcome.

I like to invest in companies where I can really add value from my experience, network, etc., so checking out my portfolio of other investments, and my background, will generally give some guidance there.

I have always believed that a single talented analyst, working very hard, can cover an amazing amount of investment landscape, and this belief remains unchallenged in my mind.

Behind every stock is a company. Find out what it's doing.

Investors who find the best businesses to put their money behind are rewarded for their research.

When you consider the sheer magnitude of investable equities to choose from in the world's emerging markets, you realize that finding one that looks attractive enough to warrant investing your faith and assets in is as formidable a task as finding a needle in a haystack. Fortunately, researching investment opportunities is a lot more interesting than digging for needles in haystacks.

Spend at least as much time researching a stock as you would choosing a refrigerator.

Any time an investment company has to spend heavily on advertising, it's probably a bad business in which to invest.

While it's wonderful that investors have access to all the data now available to them, it has become a full-time job to sift through it and separate out the valuable news from the useless noise.

The amount of data and analysis available for free is a true example of information explosion has leveled the playing field for individual investors.

My day job, running a fund management company, means I know that I and my team can't afford not to read every word of every document about assets or markets we propose to invest in, and to be absolutely clear we are complying with all the legal and regulatory requirements involved.

Investigate carefully before you invest. Spend as much time researching the investment as you spend earning the money.

My initial desire to blog came from something that's always been my approach to investing - I'm a nerd, and I love to play with the technology, and part of my approach has really been to understand things both at a user level and at a reasonably deep tentacle level.

As a result of overdiversification, their (active managers) returns get watered down. Diversification covers up ignorance. Active managers haven't done enough research into any of their companies. If managers have 200 positions, do you think they know what's going on at any one of those companies at this moment?

I particularly remember the time I gave (the research director) my paper on the banking industry. I felt very proud of my work. However, he read through it and said, 'This is useless. What makes the stock go up and down?' That comment acted as a spur. Thereafter, I focused my analysis on seeking to identify the factors that were strongly correlated to a stock's price movement as opposed to looking at all the fundamentals. Frankly, even today, many analysts still don't know what makes their particular stocks go up and down.

Since we have emphasized that analysis will lead to a positive conclusion only in the exceptional case, it follows that many securities must be examined before one is found that has real possibilities for the analyst. By what practical means does he proceed to make his discoveries? Mainly by hard and systematic work.

With 'posts' running in the millions, Internet message boards have become an essential part of the savvy investor's arsenal.

To be sure, if you watch CNBC all day long you'll pick up some interesting news about particular companies and the economy as a whole. Unfortunately, to get to the useful information, you have to wade through reams of useless stuff, with little guidance on how to distinguish between the two.

In the early days, I promoted the idea of spending time in libraries to gain facts that other investors didn't have. Not many people did that kind of research, so it worked.

Finding the best person or the best organization to invest your money is one of the most important financial decisions you'll ever make.

When it comes to investments, I have to go to someone else to understand them, but then I have to make a judgment. I can't do that if I don't have a basic understanding myself.

To beat the market you'll have to invest serious bucks to dig up information no one else has yet.

The value of the security analyst to the investor depends largely on the investor's own attitude. If the investor asks the analyst the right questions, he is likely to get the right or at least valuable answers.

We think the most important criteria for selecting an investment firm are the manager, team, and track record.