Patient Investing Quotes

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

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.

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.

Buy when everyone else is selling and hold until everyone else is buying. That's not just a catchy slogan. It's the very essence of successful investing.

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.

If you are not willing to own a stock for 10 years, do not even think about owning it for 10 minutes.

My advice to the average investor in 1988 is to be patient and think long-term. It will take 18 months for confidence to get better and, in the meantime, this is absolutely no place for short-term money.

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

If, when making a stock investment, you're not considering holding it at least ten years, don't waste more than ten minutes considering it.

Rip Van Winkle would be the ideal stock market investor: Rip could invest in the market before his nap and when he woke up 20 years later, he'd be happy. He would have been asleep through all the ups and downs in between. But few investors resemble Mr. Van Winkle. The more often an investor counts his money - or looks at the value of his mutual funds in the newspaper - the lower his risk tolerance.

Remember this: When you are doing nothing, those speculators who feel they must trade day in and day out, are laying the foundation for your next venture. You will reap benefits from their mistakes.

Only buy something that you'd be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for 10 years.

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

Most successful investors, in fact, do nothing most of the time.

I feel no shame at being found still owning a share when the bottom of the market comes…I would go much further than that. I should say that it is from time to time the duty of a serious investor to accept the depreciation of his holdings with equanimity and without reproaching himself. … An investor…should be aiming primarily at long-period results, and should be solely judged by these.

Buy stocks like you buy your groceries, not like you buy your perfume.

I always think long term about anything. That's why I have never sold anything that I've ever purchased. And I never purchase anything that I don't think I'm going to keep for a lifetime.

One of the best rules anybody can learn about investing is to do nothing, absolutely nothing, unless there is something to do... I just wait until there is money lying in the corner, and all I have to do is go over there and pick it up... I wait for a situation that is like the proverbial "shooting fish in a barrel."

This is a lifetime job. You don't look at it, you know, now and then. It doesn't really matter. When the market comes down, then I buy my land very cheaply, so I make my money on that.

Investing is the greatest business in the world because you never have to swing. You stand at the plate; the pitcher throws you General Motors at 47! U.S. Steel at 39! And nobody calls a strike on you. There's no penalty except opportunity. All day you wait for the pitch you like; then, when the fielders are asleep, you step up and hit it.

Invest time that will compound forever.

Equities will do well over time - you just have to avoid getting excited when other people are getting excited.

An investor should ordinarily hold a small piece of an outstanding business with the same tenacity that an owner would exhibit if he owned all of that business.

When we own portions of outstanding businesses with outstanding managements, our favorite holding period is forever. We are just the opposite of those who hurry to sell and book profits when companies perform well but who tenaciously hang on to businesses that disappoint. Peter Lynch aptly likens such behavior to cutting the flowers and watering the weeds.

It is to our advantage to have securities do nothing price-wise for months, or perhaps years, while we are buying them.