At age 19, I read a book [The Intelligent Investor] and what I'm doing today, at age 76, is running things through the same thought process I learned from the book I read at 19.
If you don’t feel comfortable making a rough estimate of the asset’s future earnings, just forget it and move on. No one has the ability to evaluate every investment possibility. But omniscience isn’t necessary; you only need to understand the actions you undertake.
We set no volume goals in our insurance business generally-and certainly not in reinsurance-as virtually any volume can be achieved if profitability standards are ignored.
Over the years, a number of very smart people have learned the hard way that a long string of impressive numbers multiplied by a single zero always equals zero.
People went crazy with tulip bulbs. They went crazy with the South Sea Bubble, they went crazy internet stocks, they went crazy with the uranium stocks back when I was first getting started.