The key to investing is not assessing how much an industry is going to affect society, or how much it will grow, but rather determining the competitive advantage of any given company and, above all, the durability of that advantage.
Accounting consequences do not influence our operating or capital-allocation decisions. When acquisition costs are similar, we much prefer to purchase $2 of earnings that is not reportable by us under standard accounting principles than to purchase $1 of earnings that is reportable.
The best business returns are usually achieved by companies that are doing something quite similar today to what they were doing five or ten years ago.
Only those who will be sellers of equities in the near future should be happy at seeing stocks rise. Prospective purchasers should much prefer sinking prices.
We're coming off a quarter here that was in-line with our expectations, but much lower at WPZ due to Geismar's extended outage and a continued heavy capital investing period all as was expected.
A prediction about the direction of the stock market tells you nothing about where stocks are headed, but a whole lot about the person doing the predicting.