good luck.”
“At a great penny worth, pause a while.”
“Ignorance leads Men into a party, and Shame keeps them from getting out again.”
“He that pays for work before it’s done, has but a pennyworth for two pence.”
“Anger is never without Reason, but seldom with a good One.”
“Thou can’st not joke an enemy into a friend, but thou may’st a friend into an enemy.”
“He that falls in love with himself, will have no rivals.”
“Patience in Market, is worth Pounds in a year.”
“When the well’s dry, we know the worth of water.”
“Virtue & Happiness are Mother and Daughter.”
“Buy what thou hast no need of, and e’er long thou shalt sell they necessaries.”
“If you would not be forgotten, as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth the writing.”
“He that speaks much, is much mistaken.”
“Since thou art not sure of a Minute, throw not away an Hour.”
“’Tis easier to suppress the first Desire, than to satisfy all that follow it.”
“He that pursues two hares at once, does not catch one lets t’other go.”
“The sleeping Fox catches no poultry. Up! up!”
“If your Riches are yours, why don’t you take them to t’other World?”
“What more valuable than Gold? Diamonds. Than Diamonds? Virtue.”
“Great Estates may venture more; Little Boats must keep near Shore.”
“’Tis easier to prevent bad habits than to break them.”
“Blessed is he that expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.”
“Diligence overcomes Difficulties, Sloth makes them.”
“Neglect mending a small Fault, and ‘twill soon be a great One.”
“Proclaim not all though knowest, or all though owest.”
“A Change of Fortune hurts a wise Man no more than a Change of the Moon.”
“Love your Enemies, for they tell you your Faults.”
“Dost thou love Life? Then do not squander Time; for that’s the Stuff Life is made of.”
“Silence is not always a Sign of Wisdom, but Babbling is ever a Folly.”
“A long Life may not be good enough, but a good Life is long enough.”
“For Age and Want save while you may; No morning Sun lasts a whole day.”
“Don’t think so much of your own Cunning, as to forget other Men’s; a Cunning Man is overmatched by a cunning Man and a Half.”
“You may give a Man an Office, but you cannot give him Discretion.”
“He that doth what he should not, shall feel what he would not.”
“He is a Governor that governs his Passions, and he a Servant that serves them.”
“Employ thy time well, if thou meanest to gain leisure.”
“Suspicion may be no fault, but showing it may be a great one.”
“A good Example is the best Sermon.”
“Wise Men learn by others’ harms; Fools by their own.”
“Laziness travels so slowly that Poverty soon overtakes him.”
“He that by the Plough would thrive, himself must either hold or drive.”
“Life with Fools consists in Drinking; with the wise Man, living’s Thinking.”
“The second Vice is Lying; the first is running in Debt.”
“Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.”
“The honest Man takes Pains, and then enjoys Pleasures; the knave takes Pleasure, and then suffers Pains.”
“To be proud of Knowledge, is to be blind with Light.”
“Get what you can, and what you get hold; ‘tis the Stone that will turn all your Lead into Gold.”
“An honest Man will receive neither Money nor Praise that is not his due.”
“Men take more pains to mask than mend.”
“To be proud of Virtue, is to poison yourself with the Antidote.”
“One To-day is worth two To-morrows.”
“Idleness is theDead Sea, that swallows all Virtues: Be active in Business, that Temptation may miss her Aim; the Bird that sits, is easily shot.”
Michael Burry
“When I stand on my special-issue “Intelligent Investor” ladder and peer out over the frenzied crowd, I see very few others doing the same. Many stocks remain overvalued, and speculative excess – both on the upside and on the downside – is embedded in the frenzy around stocks of all stripes. And yes, I am talking about March 2001, not March 2000.
“In essence, the stock market represents three separate categories of business. They are, adjusted for inflation, those with shrinking intrinsic value, those with approximately stable intrinsic value, and those with steadily growing intrinsic value. The preference, always, would be to buy a long-term franchise at a substantial discount from growing intrinsic value.
“However, if one has been playing the buy-and-hold game with quality securities, one has been exposed to a substantial amount of market risk because the valuations placed on these securities have implied overly rosy scenarios prone to popular revision in times of more realistic expectation. This is one of those times, but it is my feeling that the revisions have not been severe enough, the expectations not yet realistic enough. Hence, the world’s best companies largely remain overpriced in the marketplace.
“The bulk of the opportunities remain in undervalued, smaller, more illiquid situations that often represent average or slightly above-average businesses – these stocks, having largely missed out on the speculative ride up, have nevertheless frequently been pushed down to absurd levels owing to their illiquidity during a general market panic. I will not label this Fund a “small cap” fund, for this may not be where the best opportunities are next month or next year. For now, though, the Fund is biased toward smaller capitalization stocks. As for the future, I can only say the Fund will always be biased to where the value is. If recent trends continue, it would not be surprising to find the stocks of several larger capitalization stocks with significant long-term franchises meet value criteria and hence become eligible for potential addition to the Fund.” – Michael Burry, 1Q01 letter to investors
Michael Burry on Bloomberg’s “Risk Takers”:
- “Everything I do in investment is just very different.”
- “I just really like to find my own ideas.”
- “My natural state is an outsider. I’ve always felt outside the group, and I’ve always been analyzing the group.”
- “I think a lot of funds get their ideas from Wall Street. I just like to find my own ideas. I read a lot. A lot of news. I just follow my nose. A lot of times it’s a dead end, but sometimes there’s value there.”
- “I didn’t offer transparency. I provided one quarterly report in letter form. That was all you got. I basically demanded that if you’re going to invest in my fund you need to accept my terms. The terms not being super highs, but just, I’m not going to cater to you.”
- “My positioning with my investors was always, I need three to five years.”
Michael Burry in The Big Short:
- In early 2004…Burry immersed himself for the first time in the bond market. He learned all he could about how money got borrowed and lent in America. He didn’t talk to anyone about his new obsession; he just sat alone in his office, in San Jose, California, and read books and articles and financial filings. He wanted to know, especially, how subprime mortgage bonds worked.
- “What you want to watch are the lenders, not the borrowers. The borrowers will always be willing to take a great deal for themselves. It’s up to the lenders to show restraint, and when they lose it, watch out.”
- “The late 90s almost forced me to identify myself as a value investor, because I thought what everybody else was doing was insane.”
- Burry did not think investing could be reduced to a formula or learned from any one role model. The more he studied Buffett, the less he thought Buffett could be copied. Indeed, the lesson of Buffett was: To succeed in a spectacular fashion you had to be spectacularly unusual.
- “If you are going to be a great investor, you have to fit the style to who you are,” Burry said. “At one point I recognized that Warren Buffett, though he had every advantage in learning from Ben Graham, did not copy Ben Graham, but rather set out on his own path, and ran money his way, by his own rules.… I also immediately internalized the idea that no school could teach someone how to be a great investor. If it were true, it’d be the most popular school in the world, with an impossibly high tuition. So it must not be true.”
- “Time is a variable continuum,” [Burry] wrote to one of his e-mail friends one Sunday morning in 1999: “An afternoon can fly by or it can
