Long-Term Investment 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.

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.

Investing is where you find a few great companies and then sit on your ass.

After spending many years in Wall Street and after making and losing millions of dollars I want to tell you this: It never was my thinking that made the big money for me. It always was my sitting. Got that? My sitting tight!

If you're going to buy something which compounds for 30 years at 15% per annum and you pay one 35% tax at the very end, the way that works out is that after taxes, you keep 13.3% per annum. In contrast, if you bought the same investment, but had to pay taxes every year of 35% out of the 15% that you earned, then your return would be 15% minus 35% of 15%-or only 9.75% per year compounded. So the difference there is over 3.5%. And what 3.5% does to the numbers over long holding periods like 30 years is truly eye-opening.

Great investing requires a lot of delayed gratification.

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.

The only way to win in a casino is to own one….No, I’ve never known anyone to have made money paying at a Casino over a period of time.

When we own portions of outstanding businesses with outstanding managements, our favorite holding period is forever.

We owe it to our troops to make policy that strengthens America now and in the future.

We talk about long-term patient investing, and that idea that slow and steady does win the race, that time can be your best friend when it comes to investing. That's why we have a turtle as a logo at Ariel.

Everyone wants a piece of land. It's the only sure investment. It can never depreciate like a car or a washing machine. Land will double its value in ten years. In less than that. Land is going up every day.

To focus capital and entrepreneurship into empowering innovation, we should change is the capital gains tax rate. We would be better served by a regressive tax rate, that would become progressively smaller the longer the investment is held.

We adopted a focused strategy of core businesses in Citicorp that play to our unique historic strengths as a global bank that will provide strong growth and attractive returns over the long-term... And we've identified non-core assets we have shed.

The Canadian debt-to-GDP ratio will continue to decrease every year, including the first three years under the Liberal government. That is what we're focused on. We know we need to invest in the kind of long-term growth and short-term job creation that Canadians expect, and Liberals the only party offering to do that.

An amazing piece of advice for a lot of kids, 50-year-olds, whoever is listening right now: Saving money is a good strategy. I didn't have stuff, but it was because my parents were saving. They were saving. We didn't get toys. They told us to go outside and paint a rock. It was very, very smart because after seven or eight years, he was able to buy a liquor store of his own in Springfield, New Jersey - Shoppers Discount Liquors. He built up a great business.

I know why elected officials want to spend money. It’s great. I can get a vote from you if I give you some money. OK but that doesn’t help your children. It just helps you.

Don't spend all of your money a quarter at a time. Save up and buy something special, something fine, something of lasting value, or something that will give you rich memories for a lifetime. Remember, all that candy money can add up to a small fortune.

In Indian companies, people aren't too worried about the pace of growth as long as you're setting up a business which will survive for years.

A lasting architecture has to have roots.

Finding a single investment that will return 20% per year for 40 years tends to happen only in dreamland. In the real world, you uncover an opportunity, and then you compare other opportunities with that. And you only invest in the most attractive opportunities. That's your opportunity cost. That's what you learn in freshman economics. The game hasn't changed at all. That's why Modern Portfolio Theory is so asinine.

Market prices for stocks fluctuate at great amplitudes around intrinsic value but, over the long term, intrinsic value is virtually always reflected at some point in market price.

Over a 10-year period, 99 out of 100 new entrepreneurs will fail. Only one will be left standing as others get pushed out of the market or burn out from working so hard. It's really sad.

Intelligence collection has its place—no question—… But no matter how important collection is, in the short and even the long run, it just doesn’t cost very much.

You can't run a company simply by the numbers. So if you're going to bet on someone, you bet on someone you want to be in business with for a long time.