We try to buy businesses with good-to-superb underlying economics run by honest and able people and buy them at sensible prices. That's all I'm trying to do.
None of this means, however, that a business or stock is an intelligent purchase simply because it is unpopular; a contrarian approach is just as foolish as a follow-the-crowd strategy. What's required is thinking rather than polling. Unfortunately, Bertrand Russell's observation about life in general applies with unusual force in the financial world: "Most men would rather die than think. Many do."
The strategy we've adopted precludes our following standard diversification dogma. Many pundits would therefore say the strategy must be riskier than that employed by more conventional investors. We disagree. We believe that a policy of portfolio concentration may well decrease risk if it raises, as it should, both the intensity with which an investor thinks about a business and the comfort-level he must feel with its economic characteristics before buying into it.
[Economy] is flat on the floor, and the paramedics have arrived. And they shouldn't argue about whether they put the resuscitation equipment a quarter of an inch this way or a quarter of an inch this way, or they shouldn't start criticizing the patient, because he didn't have a blood pressure test or something like that. They should do what's needed right now.
If you were at Lehman, the same thing happened. If you were at AIG, the shareholders are getting creamed on these things. And those shareholders are not just a bunch of big shots in Wall Street. Those are pension funds, and those are investors all over the country. I wouldn't worry too much about that. Justice won't be perfect on it.
Investors... can't pick stocks that are better than average. Stocks are a good thing to own over time. There's only two things you can do wrong: You can buy the wrong ones, and you can buy or sell them at the wrong time. And the truth is you never need to sell them.
Well, one time some attractive woman sat next to Charlie and asked him what he owed his success to, and, unfortunately, she insisted on a one word answer. He had a speech prepared that would have gone on for several hours. But when forced to boil it down to one word, he said that was "rational". You know, he comes equipped for rationality, and he applies it in business. He doesn't always apply it elsewhere, but he applies it in business and that has made him a huge business success.
We've seen what can be accomplished when we use 50% of our human capacity. If you visualize what 100% can do, you'll join me as an unbridled optimist about America's future.