By Master Class Invest
“Patience can produce uncommon profits” Philip L Carret
“It is possible to make money— and a great deal of money—in the stock market. But it can’t be done overnight or by haphazard buying and selling. The big profits go to the intelligent, careful and patient investor, not to the reckless and overeager speculator” J Paul Getty
“I think the record shows the advantage of a peculiar mind-set – not seeking action for its own sake, but instead combining extreme patience with extreme decisiveness” Charlie Munger
“This company looks cheap, that company looks cheap, but the overall economy could completely screw it up. The key is to wait. Sometimes the hardest thing to do is to do nothing.” David Tepper
“Most people are too fretful, they worry too much. Success means being very patient, but aggressive when it’s time.” Charlie Munger
"I consider patience to be the most important ingredient for success in the market." Francois Rochon
“People always want investments to go up like a line.…That’s just not reality. You make 80% of your money in 20% of the time in investing and you have to be patient.” Jeffery Gundlach
"[There] is the need for patience if big profits are to be made from investment. Put another way, it is often easier to tell what will happen to the price of a stock than how much time will elapse before it happens" Phil Fisher
“One of the best rules anybody can learn about investing is to do nothing, absolutely nothing, unless there is something to do” James Rogers
“Patience, patience and more patience. Ben Graham said it, but it is true of all investment disciplines, not only value investing, although it is indispensable to that” Peter Cundill
“Inaction and patience are almost always the wisest options for investors in the stock market” Guy Spier
“Throughout all my years of investing I've found that the big money was never made in the buying or the selling. The big money was made in the waiting” Jessie Livermore
“There aren’t always great things to do, and sometimes we maximize our contribution by being discerning and relatively inactive. Patient opportunism – waiting for bargains – is often your best strategy” Howard Marks
"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" James Rogers
“You don’t have to be fully invested all the time. Have patience, keep your standards.” Irving Kahn
“We don’t get paid for activity, just for being right. As to how long we’ll wait, we’ll wait indefinitely” Warren Buffett
“I like to be very patient and then when I see something, go a little bit crazy.” Stanley Druckenmiller
“In our style of doing things, patience is patience is patience” Peter Cundill
“When there’s nothing particularly clever to do, the potential pitfall lies in insisting on being clever” Howard Marks.
"Happiness ensues when it is not pursued - investing is the same thing. Success occurs when you are willing to wait for opportunities” Mark Kingdon
“Investors need discipline to avoid the many unattractive pitches that are thrown, patience to wait for the right pitch, and judgement to know when it is time to swing” Seth Klarman
"The big money is not in the buying and selling … but in the waiting" Charlie Munger
“The stock market is like the weather in that if you don’t like the current conditions all you have to do is wait awhile” Lou Simpson
“The single most important skill for being a good investor is to be very content with not doing anything for extended periods and that’s perfectly fine” Mohnish Pabrai
“Our success rests on having the discipline to wait patiently for opportunities to present themselves and then having the courage to run towards them when everyone else is running away” Steve Leonard
"Some would say that this patience is part of our strategy, but I would say it's more part of our DNA. I like to say "If there's nothing to do, do nothing" Jim Tisch
“We don’t have to swing at everything” Mario Gabelli
“The trick in investing it just to sit there and watch pitch after pitch go by and wait for the one right in your sweet spot. And if people are yelling “swing you bum”, ignore them. There is a temptation for people to act far to frequently in stocks just because they are liquid” Warren Buffett
"Be patient. Watched stock never boils" Peter Lynch
“You have to have patience in any business, and I think ours is no different” Andreas Halvorsen
"Legendary investor Peter Lynch always emphasized the importance of being patient: "Frequently, years of patience are rewarded in a single year" Francois Rochon
"Sitting still is the hardest thing to do. As Pascal wrote 'The hardest thing for a man to do is sit quietly in a room'" Mark Kingdon
“Money managers running all types of strategies need good action plans for periods when the opportunity set is fallow. They must resist the allure of stretching parameters and rationalizing why merely good positions are okay to establish in the absence of very good or great positions” Paul Singer
"The beauty in this business is that there are just hordes of future opportunities waiting and some of them may be huge if you're patient. And I think Ben Franklin summed it up well: "He who has patience can have what he will" Frank Martin
"Have patience. Stocks don't go up immediately" Walter Schloss
“Traditionally the investor has been the man with patience and the courage of his convictions who would buy when the harried or disheartened speculator was selling” Benjamin Graham & David Dodd
"Being patient is at the cornerstone of everything we do" John Rogers
"We do a lot of thinking and not a lot of acting. A lot of investors do a lot of acting, and not a lot of thinking" Lou Simpson
"Investors who aspire to long term success cannot afford the luxury of impatience [though they usually think the opposite is true]" Frank Martin
"Value investing requires deep reservoirs of patience and discipline" Seth Klarman
"We have a culture of patience. Even though we work hard every day trying to uncover the next great investment, we only deploy our capital when we have real conviction that we have found one. When we don’t find interesting ideas, we do nothing and hold cash. For this reason, I’ve often joked that I’m 97% unproductive. While this means I better be damn productive the other 3% of the time, it also means exercising patience often and waiting for great opportunities." Brian Spector
“The stock market is designed to transfer money from the active to the patient.” Warren Buffett
"My mantra has always been like that of Milwaukee Braves pitcher Lew Burdette, who once said "I earn my living from the hungriness of the hitters." I earn my living from the hungriness of investors, from their decisiveness, their forcefulness, from their great urge for immediacy" Mark Spitznagel
"Phil Carret is about 96 and has been investing for over 70 years. He has done very well but he is patient. I'm not as patient as he is but I'd like to last as long" Walter Schloss
“Patience is one of the most important virtues for making any value investment.” Jim Tisch
"If you've done the numbers and are satisfied with them and the principle is right, you just have to grit your teeth and be patient" Peter Cundill
"We think one of our advantages is the ability to be more patient than others, especially as investment time horizons appear to be getting shorter" David Einhorn
"The key rules are don’t swing the bat unless it’s a slow pitch right down the middle of the plate, and don’t be bullied by the market into doing something irrational, whether buying or selling. This may sound obvious or clichéd to some, and perhaps confusingly ironic to others, but the ability to sit and do nothing may be the most rare and valuable investing skill of all. Inevitably, extreme price dislocations occur that create real opportunities for action, and only the patient and prepared investor can recognize such ideal situations and take full advantage." Chris Mittleman
"Patience, steady emotions, and common sense all are important when investing in common stocks" Ed Wachenheim
“In essence, healthy investor behaviour means being disciplined, patient and unemotional” Chris Davis
"What you are trying to do is find specific investments that you think over time are going to work out when someone’s gotta sell. There is always a problem. All you gotta do is wait and take your time and there is always somebody who has made a mistake or a company is over-levered and really what we try to do is wait for those moments in time when we can invest" Marc Lasry
"In my free time, I listen to some old Wall-Street Week TV shows (I keep quite an extensive personal archive). In 1996, Louis Rukeyser interviewed the legendary Philip Carret and asked him what was the most important lesson of his 75 years of experience. Carret answered just one word: “Patience”. Francois Rochon
"Our stay-put behaviour reflects our view that the stock market serves as a relocation centre at which money is moved from the active to the patient" Warren Buffett
"I prefer the laissez-faire approach to investing that waits for simple ideas, and eschew chasing down complex opportunities that exert pressure to take action." Allan Mecham
"Patience is one of the most critical attributes for a long-term investor because you can be right and the market may tell you that you’re wrong, and it may tell you so for an extended period of time. It may reach the point where your sanity begins to be questioned by clients and even your colleagues. I’ve been in situations like that. There were many times where I’ve been involved in an investment, where it looks like it might not work out, and it ultimately did work out, and worked out wonderfully" Chris Mittleman
"Our aim is to keep portfolio management grounded in a mentality of long-term business ownership. We've tried to stack the odds, via our policies and procedures, to promote a business minded approach - not a fund manager approach - that allows the four most important investment principles to flourish: patience and discipline, and more patience and discipline. Our reasoning is simple; It's easy to do dumb things in investing." Allan Mecham
"It's one thing to be patient and understanding, but that shouldn't come at the expense of intellectual honesty." William Martin
"We're like a basketball team playing without a shot-clock, patiently waiting for lay-ups and slam dunks, while the opposition operates within the confines of a 24-second shot-clock forced to take a raft of unbridled shots" Allan Mecham
"The biggest challenge for investors is patience and that is in short supply. You used to get a quarterly statement and often throw it in the garbage; now you can check your stock price 30 times a minute. There’s a lot more data, a lot more ability to crunch numbers and compare people. That works against investors, and patience continues to be the hardest challenge. It always was, but now it is even worse." Joel Greenblatt
