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.
In some corner of the world they are probably still holding regular meetings of the Flat Earth Society. We derive no comfort because important people, vocal people, or great numbers of people agree with us. Nor do we derive comfort if they don't.
A home is one of the most important assets that most people will ever buy. Homes are also where memories are made and you want to work with someone you can trust.
It's going to be tough because the economy is going to be getting worse for a while. And it might fall off a cliff if this doesn't pass. But nobody will ever know that if it does.
Asset values and earning power are the dominant factors affecting the valuation of a controlling interest in a business. Market price, which governs valuation of minority interest positions, is of little or no importance in valuing a controlling interest.
We've been in a recession, by any common sense definition, because if you look at the American public, they've got 20 billion - 20 trillion, I should say, worth of residential homes.
In that, we agreed with Andrew Carnegie, who said that huge fortunes that flow in large part from society should in large part be returned to society. In my case, the ability to allocate capital would have had little utility unless I lived in a rich, populous country in which enormous quantities of marketable securities were traded and were sometimes ridiculously mispriced. And fortunately for me, that describes the U.S. in the second half of the last century.
We do not have, nor have had, and never will have an opinion about where the stock market, interest rates, or business activity will be a year from now.
I think it's been, you know, kind of like a tragic play to this point. But at this point, I think it's clear, and will be clear to the majority of the Congress. I think it's clear to the American people that there is only one countervailing force to a world where financial institutions are trying to sell instruments every day and where credit has dried up, and that's the United States Treasury.
The worst sort of business is one that grows rapidly, requires significant capital to engender the growth, and then earns little or no money. Think airlines. Here a durable competitive advantage has proven elusive ever since the days of the Wright Brothers. Indeed, if a farsighted capitalist had been present at Kitty Hawk, he would have done his successors a huge favor by shooting Orville down.
The latter qualification brings to mind a fellow who applied for a job and stated he had twenty years of experience-which was corrected by a former employer to read "one year's experience-twenty times.
I have no use whatsoever for projections or forecasts. They create an illusion of apparent precision. The more meticulous they are, the more concerned you should be. We never look at projections, but we care very much about, and look very deeply at, track records. If a company has a lousy track record, but a very bright future, we will miss the opportunity.