Quotes about investor

A collection of quotes on the topic of investor, market, marketer, marketing.

Quotes about investor

“The rate of investment – the speed at which investors wish to increase the capital stock – should be related, if to anything, to q, the value of capital relative to its replacement cost.”

James Tobin (1918–2002) American economist

Source: "A general equilibrium approach to monetary theory" (1969), p. 21 as cited in: Sılvio Rendon, "Non-Tobin’s q in Tests for Financial Constraints," 2009

Speed

“The average American citizen should have presented to him in a simple and easily comprehended form the truth about the business affairs that affect his daily life as consumer, employee, employer, as investor, as voter. […] There are concrete instances of unfair competition that can be reached under the Federal criminal legislation, and they should be attacked and destroyed in the courts. But the laws should be such that normally, and save in extraordinary, circumstances, there should be no need of recourse to the courts. What is needed is administrative supervision and control. This should be so exercised that the highways of commerce and opportunity should be open to all; and not nominally open, but really open, a consistent effort being made to deprive every man of any advantage that is not due to his own superiority and efficiency, controlled by moral purpose. […] Not only as a matter of justice and honesty, but as a matter of prime popular interest, we should see that this control is so exercised as to favor a proper return to the upright business manager and honest investor.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1910s, The Progressives, Past and Present (1910)

Life, Truth, Justice, Law

“Capitalists and their predecessors—slaveowners, moneylenders, merchant-investors—owe their very existence to the State. In early times, concentration of political and spiritual power precedes economic stratification in society.”

Peter Gelderloos (1982) American anarchist

Worshiping Power: An Anarchist View of Early State Formation (2017), p. 7

Time

“Overcapitalization in all its shapes is one of the prime evils; for it is one of the most fruitful methods by which unscrupulous men get improper profits, and when the holdings come into innocent hands we are forced into the uncomfortable position of being obliged to reduce the dividends of innocent investors, or of permitting the public and the wage-workers, either or both, to suffer. Such really effective control over great inter-State business can come only from the National Government. The American people demands the new Nationalism needful to deal with the new problems; it puts the National need above sectional, or personal advantage; it is impatient of the utter confusion which results from local legislatures attempting to treat National issues as local issues; it is still more impatient of the National impotence which springs from the over-division of governmental powers; the impotence which makes it possible for local selﬁshness, or for the vulpine legal cunning which is hired by wealthy special interests, to bring National activities to a deadlock; The control must be exercised in several different ways. It may be that National incorporation is not at the moment possible; but there must be some affirmative. National control, on terms which will secure publicity in the affairs of and complete supervision and control over the big, Nation-wide business corporations; a control that will prevent and not legalize abuses. […] Such control should protect and favor the corporation which acts honestly, exactly as it should check and punish, when it cannot prevent, every species of dishonesty.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1910s, The Progressives, Past and Present (1910)

Men, People, Way, Exercises

“Markowitz's main interest is prescription of rules of rational behaviour for investors;”

James Tobin (1918–2002) American economist

Tobin, James. " Liquidity preference as behavior towards risk http://web.uconn.edu/ahking/Tobin58.pdf." The review of economic studies (1958): 65-86. 1950s-60s Context: A forthcoming book by Harry Markowitz, Techniques of Portfolio Selection, will treat the general problem of finding dominant sets and computing the corresponding opportunity locus, for sets of securities all of which involve risk. Markowitz's main interest is prescription of rules of rational behaviour for investors; the main concern of this paper is the implications for economic theory, mainly comparative statics, that can be derived from assuming that investors do in fact follow such rules.

“The only question is how coalitions of investors have shifted around on tactical issues now and then. As they do, the parties shift to opposite positions, within a narrow spectrum.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Quotes 1990s, 1990-1994, Interview by Adam Jones, 1990
Context: In the United States, the political system is a very marginal affair. There are two parties, so-called, but they're really factions of the same party, the Business Party. Both represent some range of business interests. In fact, they can change their positions 180 degrees, and nobody even notices. In the 1984 election, for example, there was actually an issue, which often there isn't. The issue was Keynesian growth versus fiscal conservatism. The Republicans were the party of Keynesian growth: big spending, deficits, and so on. The Democrats were the party of fiscal conservatism: watch the money supply, worry about the deficits, et cetera. Now, I didn't see a single comment pointing out that the two parties had completely reversed their traditional positions. Traditionally, the Democrats are the party of Keynesian growth, and the Republicans the party of fiscal conservatism. So doesn't it strike you that something must have happened? Well, actually, it makes sense. Both parties are essentially the same party. The only question is how coalitions of investors have shifted around on tactical issues now and then. As they do, the parties shift to opposite positions, within a narrow spectrum.

Question

“The intelligent investor is a realist who sells to optimists and buys from pessimists.”

Benjamin Graham book The Intelligent Investor

Source: The Intelligent Investor: The Classic Text on Value Investing (1949), Chapter II, The Investor and Stock-Market Fluctuations, p. 31
Context: Why could the typical investor expect any better success in trying to buy at low levels and sell at high levels than in trying to forecast what the market is going to do? Because if he does the former he acts only after the market has moved down into buying levels or up into selling levels. His role is not that of a prophet but of a businessman seizing clearly evident investment opportunities. He is not trying to be smarter than his fellow investors but simply trying to be less irrational than the mass of speculators who insist on buying after the market advances and selling after it goes down. If the market persists in behaving foolishly, all he seems to need is ordinary common sense in order to exploit its foolishness.

Intelligence

“An investor should act as though he had a lifetime decision card with just twenty punches on it.”

Warren Buffett (1930) American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

Decision

“If we don't act, this country is going to go to the dogs and no investor will want to come here.”

Frank Bainimarama (1954) Prime Minister of Fiji

(8 December 2004).
2000, 2004

Dogs, Country

“The Chartered ccountants by virtue of their qualifications, experience and training can render valuable services in these difficult times in areas which are vital to economic and industrial growth. It should be the duty of the members of the profession in the Northern India Regional Council, apart from examining accuracy of transactions, the modern auditor should also look into the propriety of such transactions… the profession has to develop uniform accounting principles, standard terminologies and precise definitions of various accounting concepts. This was desirable from the point of view of providing reliable information in the financial statements for the benefit of the intending investors, members of the public, government agencies and financial institutions. This will enable individuals and organisations to form a fairly accurate judgment of the financial position by a study of the audited financial statements of companies.”

Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed (1905–1977) the fifth President of India and a politician

Source: From the Desk of the Chairman... http://nirc-icai.org/Newsletter/NewsletterFebruary2012.pdf, Northern India Regional council of the ICAI, News Letter, February 2012

Study, Time, Training

“By capitalist, I mean the investor who puts his money into a concern and draws profits there from without participating in the organisation or management of the business. Were all these to disappear in the night, leaving no trace behind, nothing would be changed.”

Keir Hardie (1856–1915) Scottish socialist and labour leader

Source: From Serfdom to Socialism (1907), p. 11

Money, Business, Change, Drawing

“when a famous investor publishes a newsletter, it's a sure tip-off that his techniques have stopped working.”

William J. Bernstein (1948) economist

Source: The Four Pillars of Investing (2002), Chapter 3, The Market Is Smarter Than You Are, p. 88.

“Whenever the investor sold out in an upswing as soon as the top level of the previous well-recognized bull market was reached, he had a chance in the next bear market to buy back at one third (or better) below his selling price.”

Benjamin Graham (1894–1976) American investor

Source: The Intelligent Investor: The Classic Text on Value Investing (1949), Chapter II, The Investor and Stock-Market Fluctuations, p. 35

Chance

“It’s simply to say that managers and investors alike must understand that accounting numbers is the beginning, not the end, of business valuation.”

Warren Buffett (1930) American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

1982 Chairman's Letter http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/1982.html Letters to Shareholders (1957 - 2012)

Understanding, Business

“Though business conditions may change, corporations and securities may change, and financial institutions and regulations may change, human nature remains the same. Thus the important and difficult part of sound investment, which hinges upon the investor's own temperament and attitude, is not much affected by the passing years.”

Benjamin Graham (1894–1976) American investor

Introduction, p. xxiv
The Intelligent Investor: The Classic Text on Value Investing (1949)

Business, Nature, Change, Parting

“The investor would not be far wrong if this motto read more simply: "Never buy a stock immediately after a substantial rise or sell one immediately after a substantial drop."”

Benjamin Graham (1894–1976) American investor

Source: The Intelligent Investor: The Classic Text on Value Investing (1949), Chapter II, The Investor and Stock-Market Fluctuations, p. 43

Reading

“The value of the security analyst to the investor depends largely on the investor's own attitude. If the investor asks the analyst the right questions, he is likely to get the right—or at least valuable— answers.”

Benjamin Graham (1894–1976) American investor

Source: The Intelligent Investor: The Classic Text on Value Investing (1949), Chapter III, The Investor and His Advisers, p. 51

Question, Dependency

“Although the human rights dimension of trade is obvious, investors and corporations think that they can continue working in a human-rights-free zone.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

Report of the Independent Expert on the promotion and protection of all human rights, civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, including the right to development https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G16/151/19/PDF/G1615119.pdf?OpenElement. 2016, Report submitted to the UN Human Rights Council

Thinking

“The real reason that physicians are rotten investors is that it never occurs to them that finance is a science, just like medicine.”

William J. Bernstein (1948) economist

Introduction, p. ix.
The Four Pillars of Investing (2002)

Science

“The billionaire boom is not a sign of a thriving economy but a symptom of a failing economic system. The people who make our clothes, assemble our phones and grow our food are being exploited to ensure a steady supply of cheap goods, and swell the profits of corporations and billionaire investors.”

Winnie Byanyima (1959) Ugandan aeronautical engineer, politician and diplomat

Richest 1 percent bagged 82 percent of wealth created last year - poorest half of humanity got nothing https://www.oxfam.org/en/pressroom/pressreleases/2018-01-22/richest-1-percent-bagged-82-percent-wealth-created-last-year, Oxfam International (22 January 2018)

People, Food, Clothes

“But a pin lies in wait for every bubble. And when the two eventually meet, a new wave of investors learns some very old lessons: First, many in Wall Street — a community in which quality control is not prized — will sell investors anything they will buy. Second, speculation is most dangerous when it looks easiest.”

Warren Buffett (1930) American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

2000 Chairman's Letter
Letters to Shareholders (1957 - 2012)

Communication, Learning, Waiting

“…there won’t be one, single global market. But there will be global investors.”

Kenneth Griffin (1968) American hedge fund manager

"The Age of Global Markets and the Global Investor," 25th International SFOA Bürgenstock Conference http://www.ioncorporation.com/presentation2.html From a presentation by Griffin.

“According to the academic world view that markets are efficient, only the revelation of a dramatic piece of information can cause a crash, yet in reality even the most thorough post-mortem analyses are typically inconclusive as to what this piece of information might have been. For traders and investors, the fear of a crash is a perpetual source of stress, and the onset of the event itself always ruins the lives of some of them.”

Didier Sornette (1957) French scientist

Source: Why Stock Markets Crash - Critical Events in Complex Systems (2003), Chapter 1, Financial Crashes: What, How, Why, And When?, p. 3.

World, Fear, Reality

“The ignorance of even the best-informed investor about the more remote future is much greater than his knowledge, and he cannot but be influenced to a degree which would seem wildly disproportionate to anyone who really knew the future, and be forced to seek a clue mainly here to trends further ahead. But if this is true of the best-informed, the vast majority of those who are concerned with the buying and selling of securities know almost nothing whatever about what they are doing. They do not possess even the rudiments of what is required for a valid judgement, and are the prey of hopes and fears easily aroused by transient events and as easily dispelled.”

John Maynard Keynes book A Treatise on Money

A Treatise on Money, Volume II (1930), pp. 360–61

Fear, Hope, Knowledge, Future

“Most accountants are honorable men, trying to do a job. But they are hired by corporations, not by investors.”

George Goodman (1930–2014) American author and economics commentator

Source: The Money Game (1968), Chapter 13, But What Do The Numbers Mean?, p. 185

Men

“Interviewer: How concerned are you that regional instability will negatively affect foreign investor sentiment?”

Abdullah Ensour (1939) prime minister of Jordan

“Foreign investors did not build South Korea - South Koreans developed their country; the Germans built their economy, an economy that was once in ruins. The Germans suffered a lot but now they are the best.”

Aliko Dangote (1957) Nigerian billionaire entrepreneur

The Scoop NG http://www.thescoopng.com/we-have-scavengers-holding-licences-in-nigeria-10-quotes-by-aliko-dangote-during-birthday-event/

Suffering, Country

“It is difficult to assess how much this gambling spirit is active in the minds of individual investors. If it is, even to a small degree, it is relevant to our discussion since it makes investors prone to imitation and herding because they invest on little information. It may also explain the anomalously large volatility of prices and their potential instabilities.”

Didier Sornette (1957) French scientist

Source: Why Stock Markets Crash - Critical Events in Complex Systems (2003), Chapter 4, Positive Feedbacks, p. 114.

“The investor and the employee are in the same position, but sometimes the employee is more important, because he will be there a long time whereas an investor will often get in and out on a whim in order to make a profit.”

Akio Morita (1921–1999) Japanese businessman

Source: Made in Japan (1986), p. 143.

Time

“If investors disagree about future prospects of companies, then inevitably the future is not going to turn out as most — or perhaps even any — investors expect.”

Steve Keen (1953) Australian economist

Source: Debunking Economics - The Naked Emperor Of The Social Sciences (2001), Chapter 10, The Price Is Not Right, p. 235 (See also: Andy Kessler)

Future

“In fact, the nation's biggest investment pools are the retirement funds of the large corporations and governmental bodies, such as the California Public Employees Retirement System (CALPERS), which manages an astounding $170 billion. These plans receive a level of professional management that even the nations wealthiest investors can only dream of.”

William J. Bernstein (1948) economist

Source: The Four Pillars of Investing (2002), Chapter 3, The Market Is Smarter Than You Are, p. 85.

Dreams

“The SEC staffer argued that it was unfair that high-frequency traders couldn’t post phony bids and offers on the exchanges to extract information from actual investors without running the risk of having to stand by them.”

Michael Lewis book Flash Boys

Source: Flash Boys (2014), p. 105

“One of the greatest investments of our lifetime has been New York City real estate, and investors made the highest returns when they bought stuff during the 1970s and 1980s when people were getting mugged. The lesson is that you make the most money when you buy stuff that's out of consensus.”

Mary Meeker (1959) American venture capitalist and securities analyst

Newsweek: "Climbing Back Up" http://www.newsweek.com/climbing-back-126731 (29 August 2004)

Money, People

“The case for dumping iPhone, or at least threatening to do so in order to renegotiate Apple's subsidy requirement away, seems pretty open and shut. Apple has things all its own way right now — skimming the lion's share of the profits off the carriers' business without having to shoulder their risks. But this is an unstable situation, because the carriers' investors won't tolerate it indefinitely. What happens when they revolt?”

Eric S. Raymond (1957) American computer programmer, author, and advocate for the open source movement

The Smartphone Wars: The market share scramble and Apple’s long con http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=4128 in Armed and Dangerous (8 February 2012)

Way, Business

“The Treasury plan is a disgrace: a bailout of reckless bankers, lenders and investors that provides little direct debt relief to borrowers and financially stressed households and that will come at a very high cost to the US taxpayer. And the plan does nothing to resolve the severe stress in money markets and interbank markets that are now close to a systemic meltdown.”

Nouriel Roubini (1958) American economist

"RGE Conference Call on the Economic and Financial Outlook... and why the Treasury TARP bailout is flawed," http://www.rgemonitor.com/roubini-monitor/253762/rge_conference_call_on_the_economic_and_financial_outlookand_why_the_treasury_tarp_bailout_is_flawed RGE Monitor (2008-09-26).

Money

“So we started a new business called Bain Capital. The only problem was, while WE believed in ourselves, nobody else did. We were young and had never done this before and we almost didn't get off the ground. In those days, sometimes I wondered if I had made a really big mistake. I had thought about asking my church's pension fund to invest, but I didn't. I figured it was bad enough that I might lose my investors' money, but I didn't want to go to hell too. Shows what I know. Another of my partners got the Episcopal Church pension fund to invest. Today there are a lot of happy retired priests who should thank him. That business we started with 10 people has now grown into a great American success story. Some of the companies we helped start are names you know. An office supply company called Staples – where I'm pleased to see the Obama campaign has been shopping; The Sports Authority, which became a favorite of my sons. We started an early childhood learning center called Bright Horizons that First Lady Michelle Obama rightly praised. At a time when nobody thought we'd ever see a new steel mill built in America, we took a chance and built one in a corn field in Indiana. Today Steel Dynamics is one of the largest steel producers in the United States.”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

2012-08-31
http://www.npr.org/2012/08/30/160357612/transcript-mitt-romneys-acceptance-speech
Transcript: Mitt Romney's Acceptance Speech
NPR
[2012-08-30, gopconvention2012, Mitt Romney: Introduction (video), YouTube, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_cGyPwt5UI]
2012

Money, Happiness, People, Hell

“This [covariance] is something that is not in the habit of thinking of most amateur investors. They look at their investments one at a time, and they don't, you always have to go back and say, what's the covariance? That's what really matters for what happen to your portfolio. Because when you invest in a lot of companies that are all the same, you're asking for trouble, because the whole thing is going to either blow up or succeed. And you can't live like that. You have to be looking for low covariance.”

Robert J. Shiller (1946) American economist

Robert Shiller. Chalk Talk - Covariance, Financial Markets (Coursera) https://www.coursera.org/learn/financial-markets-global/lecture/41Ujc/chalk-talk-covariance.

Thinking, Time

“Democratization of commerce is based on everyone having the right to exercise their roles as micro consumers, micro producers, micro entrepreneurs, micro investors, and micro innovators. Access to information removes the first impediment to building this brave, new world. Information asymmetry has always been at the heart of poverty.”

C.K. Prahalad book The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid

Source: The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, 2009, p. 22

World, Exercises, Heart

“Long ago, Sir Isaac Newton gave us three laws of motion, which were the work of genius. But Sir Isaac's talents didn't extend to investing: He lost a bundle in the South Sea Bubble, explaining later, "I can calculate the movement of the stars, but not the madness of men." If he had not been traumatized by this loss, Sir Isaac might well have gone on to discover the Fourth Law of Motion: For investors as a whole, returns decrease as motion increases.”

Warren Buffett (1930) American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

2005 Chairman's Letter http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/2005.html Letters to Shareholders (1957 - 2012)

Men, Law, Star, Loss

“It is an easy and patriotic matter for the lawyer, minister, professor, employer, or investor, placed above the arena of competition, to proclaim the equal right of all races to American opportunities; to avow his own willingness to give way should even a better Chinaman, Hindu, or Turk come in to take his place; and to rebuke the racial hatred of those who resist this displacement. His patriotism and world-wide brotherhood cost him and his family nothing, and indeed they add to his profits and leisure.”

John R. Commons (1862–1945) United States institutional economist and labor historian

pgs. 115-16.
Races and Immigrants in America, 1907

World, Family, Way

“Since it is the actions of investors whose buy and sell decisions move prices up and down, any deviation from a random walk has ultimately to be traced back to the behavior of investors.”

Didier Sornette (1957) French scientist

Source: Why Stock Markets Crash - Critical Events in Complex Systems (2003), Chapter 4, Positive Feedbacks, p. 81

Behavior, Decision

“The true investor scarcely ever has to sell his shares, and at all other times he is free di disregard the current price quotation. He need pay attention to it and act upon it only to the extent that it suits his book, and no more. Thus the investor who permits himself to be stampeded or unduly worried by unjustified market declines in his holdings is perversely transforming his basic advantage into a basic disadvantage. That man would be better off if his stocks had no market quotation at all, for he would then be spared the mental anguish caused him by other persons mistakes of judgement.”

Benjamin Graham (1894–1976) American investor

Source: The Intelligent Investor: The Classic Text on Value Investing (1949), Chapter II, The Investor and Stock-Market Fluctuations, p. 40

Books, Time, Personality

“Investors should remember that excitement and expenses are their enemies. And if they insist on trying to time their participation in equities, they should try to be fearful when others are greedy and greedy only when others are fearful.”

Warren Buffett (1930) American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

2004 Chairman's Letter http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/2004.html Letters to Shareholders (1957 - 2012)

Fear, Time

“What became a problem is there was a clause that allowed investors to cover losses. As long as you made losses one year, you could carry them over to the next and to the next. And because of that they would pay no taxes. So this fellow takes all the gold away and he says he makes losses and so he does not pay us anything. So he is the only one that is being protected. Those of us who are losing our resources are not protected. This is the thing that created the kind of debate that we had and we had to renegotiate.”

Jakaya Kikwete (1950) Tanzanian politician and president

On Tanzania's mining sector. Interviews, Interview with Financial Times, 2007-10-04 http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d8a07e28-72a3-11dc-b7ff-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check1/

Problem, Loss

“What concerns me right now is that with the actions of Dr Mahathir, who is a lauded statesman and a beloved international icon, the country could become unstable, driving away foreign investors from this nation at the same time. As a former Prime Minister, he should be more understanding of what democracy is, which cannot be achieved the way Dr Mahathir is going about it now.”

Mahathir bin Mohamad (1925) Prime Minister of Malaysia

Malaysia's Minister of Foreign Affairs Anifah Aman said in a statement on Saturday (Mar 5) that he was both surprised and disappointed with Dr Mahathir, quoted on Channel News Asia, "Dr Mahathir movement will be bad for country: Malaysia Foreign Affairs Minister" http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asiapacific/dr-mahathir-movement-will/2575782.html, March 5, 2016.

Way, Democracy, Understanding, Time

“But the investors who really follow the market, the ones who call up all the time, ninety percent of them really don't care whether they make money or not.”

George Goodman (1930–2014) American author and economics commentator

Source: The Money Game (1968), Chapter 5, You Mean That's What Money Really Is?, p. 53

Money, Time

“The great investors are almost entirely clueless as to what their supposed “employees,” the corporation managers are doing. The CEOs are almost entirely clueless as to what the branch and facility managers are doing. And the management of each facility are almost entirely clueless as to what is going on within the black box of the actual production process. In the light of this reality, Mises’ “entrepreneur”—so carefully and closely involved in the minutiae of choosing between technical possibilities of production, a brooding omnipresence guiding the efforts of every employee—is largely a construction of fantasy. It’s quite ironic, in fact, considering that Mises starts out the block quote above with the announcement that the entrepreneur is not omnipresent.”

Kevin Carson (1963) American academic

Organization Theory: A Libertarian Perspective (2008), Chapter 7
Organization Theory: A Libertarian Perspective (2008)

Quotes, Reality, Effort, Light

“Globalization cannot be allowed to become the grand global casino where investors rig the system to guarantee that they always win”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

Report of the Independent Expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order on the adverse impacts of free trade and investment agreements on a democratic and equitable international order http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/IntOrder/Pages/Reports.aspx. 2015, Report submitted to the UN General Assembly

“Ensour: The region’s political instability is expected to persist through 2015 and possibly escalate in coming years. Unsurprisingly, Jordan has been affected by the crisis and it remains a major challenge facing the economy. Since the conflict in Syria began five years ago, over 1.4m Syrians refugees have fled to Jordan and now account for about 20% of the kingdom’s population. Demand for services like health, education and electricity are soaring. For example, since the beginning of the crisis there has been a 20% increase in water consumption at the national level and a 40% jump in the north. Jordan is the second-most-water-scarce country in the world, so the economic implications of this burden are certain to weigh on foreign investors’ calculations. The global community must share this burden and more tangible support is needed to enhance Jordan’s resilience and maintain its position as the safe haven of the region.”

Abdullah Ensour (1939) prime minister of Jordan

Interview with Prime Minister Abdullah Ensour http://www.oxfordbusinessgroup.com/interview/acting-clear-vision-obg-talks-prime-minister-abdullah-ensour-0, Oxford Business Group.

Health, World, Education, Communication

“Investors making purchases in an overheated market need to recognize that it may often take an extended period for the value of even an outstanding company to catch up with the price they paid.”

Warren Buffett (1930) American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

1998 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting, as quoted in The Essays of Warren Buffett : Lessons for Corporate America (1998), p. 92

“The EMH cannot apply in a world in which investors differ in their expectations, in which the future is uncertain, and in which borrowing is rationed.”

Steve Keen (1953) Australian economist

Source: Debunking Economics - The Naked Emperor Of The Social Sciences (2001), Chapter 10, The Price Is Not Right, p. 234

World, Future

“Privatization: Disposing of public sector assets at low prices and high sales commissions to powerful groups and individuals who generously supported the ruling party’s last election campaign. It provides short-run cash windfalls to the government, while weakening its power and its cash flows in the years to come. In the Third World, a means of making valuable assets available to First World creditors and investors at fire sale prices in a situation of virtual state bankruptcy.”

Edward S. Herman (1925–2017) American journalist

Source: Beyond Hypocrisy, 1992, Doublespeak Dictionary (within Beyond Hypocrisy), p. 166.

World, Support

“The corporation as an organizational form is an enormously productive social invention. Partly because of its success it is under increasing attack from various quarters, often under the guise of “protecting” investors from self-interested managers. Some of these attacks are successful simply because the corporation is a poorly understood entity. This paper discusses what the corporation is, what it is not, and how certain misconceptions about the corporate form are fostered by its critics as part of their attack.”

Michael Jensen (1939) American economist

William H. Meckling and Michael C. Jensen, 'Reflections on the Corporation as a Social Invention,' in Controlling the Giant Corporation: A Symposium(Center for Research in Government Policy and Business, Graduate School of Management, University of Rochester, 1982

Success, Parting

“There’s no denying that a collapse in stock prices today would pose serious macroeconomic challenges for the United States. Consumer spending would slow, and the U. S. economy would become less of a magnet for foreign investors. Economic growth, which in any case has recently been at unsustainable levels, would decline somewhat. History proves, however, that a smart central bank can protect the economy and the financial sector from the nastier side effects of a stock market collapse.”

Ben Bernanke (1953) American economist

"A Crash Course for Central Bankers," http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3272 Foreign Policy (September/October 2000)

History

“A price decline is of no real importance to the bona fide investor unless it is either very substantial—say, more than a third from cost—or unless it reflects a known deterioration of consequence in the company's position. In a well-defined bear market many sound common stocks sell temporarily at extraordinary low prices. It is possible that the investor may then have a paper loss of fully 50 per cent on some of his holdings, without any convincing indication that the underlying values have been permanently affected.”

Benjamin Graham (1894–1976) American investor

Source: The Intelligent Investor: The Classic Text on Value Investing (1949), Chapter II, The Investor and Stock-Market Fluctuations, p. 25

Loss

“We struggle to manage complexity every day. We follow intricate diets to lose weight, juggle multiple remotes to operate our home entertainment systems, face proliferating data at the office, and hack through thickets of regulation at tax time. But complexity isn’t destiny. Sull and Eisenhardt argue there’s a better way: By developing a few simple yet effective rules, you can tackle even the most complex problems.
Simple rules are a hands-on tool to achieve some of our most pressing personal and professional objectives, from overcoming insomnia to becoming a better manager or a smarter investor. Simple rules can help solve some of our most urgent social challenges from setting interest rates at the Federal Reserve to protecting endangered marine wildlife along California’s coast.”

Kathleen M. Eisenhardt American economist

Book abstract
Simple Rules, 2015

Way, Home, Problem, Time

“Wealthy investors should realize that they are the cash cows of the investment industry, and that most of the exclusive investment vehicles available to them - separate accounts, hedge funds, limited partnerships, and the like - are designed to bleed them with commissions, transactional costs, and other fees.”

William J. Bernstein (1948) economist

Source: The Four Pillars of Investing (2002), Chapter 8, Behavioral Therapy, p. 187.

Partnership

“The true order of events shows that orthodoxy clearly has reversed the process through which investment is funded. Banks do not begin as intermediaries which accept deposits of 'savers' and then make loans to 'investors', for this would assume that the public has already developed the 'banking habit'. This habit is the end result of public experience with short term bank liabilities which have been created as banks extend short term credit to finance working capital expenses.”

L. Randall Wray (1953) American economist

Source: Money and Credit in Capitalist Economies, 1990, p. 58; as cited in: Stein (1994).

“The country needs strong leadership and a clear sense of direction, to give confidence to investors, to keep the economy moving, and to keep people in work.”

Theresa May (1956) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech declaring bid for the Conservative Party leadership http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/theresa-mays-tory-leadership-launch-statement-full-text-a7111026.html (30 June 2016)

People, Confidence, Sense, Strong

“In its new aspect the corporation is a means whereby the wealth of innumerable individuals has been concentrated into huge aggregates and whereby control over this wealth has been surrendered to a unified direction. The power attendant upon such concentration has brought forth princes of industry, whose position in the community is yet to be defined. The surrender of control over their wealth by investors has effectively broken the old property relationships and has raise the problem of defining these relationship anew. The direction of industry by persons other than those who have ventured their wealth has raised the question of the motive force back of such direction and the effective distribution of the returns from business enterprise.”

Adolf A. Berle (1895–1971) American diplomat

Source: The Modern Corporation and Private Property. 1932/1967, p. 2 (1967, p. 4)

Communication, Motivation, Question, Business

“All the real money in investment will have to be made—as most of it has been in the past— not out of buying and selling but out of owning and holding securities, receiving interests and dividends therein, and benefiting from their long-term increases in value. Hence stockholder's major energies and wisdom as investors should be directed toward assuring themselves of the best operating results from their corporations. This in turn means assuring themselves of fully honest and competent managements.”

Benjamin Graham (1894–1976) American investor

Source: The Intelligent Investor: The Classic Text on Value Investing (1949), Chapter I, What the Intelligent Investor Can Accomplish, p. 17

Wisdom, Money, Past

“Never must the courts become instruments of injustice. Never should they lend themselves to the execution of manifestly unjust investor-State dispute settlement awards.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

“Basically, price fluctuations have only one significant meaning for the true investor. They provide him with an opportunity to buy wisely when prices fall sharply and to sell wisely when they advance a great deal. At other times he will do better if he forgets about the stock market and pays attention to his dividend returns and to the operating results of his companies.”

Benjamin Graham (1894–1976) American investor

Source: The Intelligent Investor: The Classic Text on Value Investing (1949), Chapter II, The Investor and Stock-Market Fluctuations, p. 42

Time, Forgetting

“The investor's primary interest lies in acquiring and holding suitable securities at suitable prices.”

Benjamin Graham (1894–1976) American investor

Source: The Intelligent Investor: The Classic Text on Value Investing (1949), Chapter II, The Investor and Stock-Market Fluctuations, p. 43

“Observation over many years has taught us that the chief losses to investors come from the purchase of low-quality securities at times of favorable business conditions.”

Benjamin Graham book The Intelligent Investor

Source: The Intelligent Investor (1973) (Fourth Revised Edition), Chapter 20, "Margin of Safety": The Central Concept, p. 280

Business, Loss, Time

“It pains to see that some investors are importing raw commodities, although just on their door steps, similar produces are left to decay.”

Ali Mohamed Shein (1948) President of Zanzibar

Insisting investors to give local produce first priority. 2007-11-14 http://www.ippmedia.com/ipp/guardian/2007/11/14/102447.html

Pain

“The genuine investor in common stocks does not need a great equipment of brain and knowledge, but he does need some unusual qualities of character”

Benjamin Graham (1894–1976) American investor

Source: The Intelligent Investor: The Classic Text on Value Investing (1949), Chapter I, What the Intelligent Investor Can Accomplish, p. 8

Knowledge

“But now for the final exam: If you expect to be a net saver during the next five years, should you hope for a higher or lower stock market during that period? Many investors get this one wrong. Even though they are going to be net buyers of stocks for many years to come, they are elated when stock prices rise and depressed when they fall. In effect, they rejoice because prices have risen for the "hamburgers" they will soon be buying. This reaction makes no sense. 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.”

Warren Buffett (1930) American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

1997 Chairman's Letter
Letters to Shareholders (1957 - 2012)

Happiness, Hope, Sense, Future

“Here’s why I would recommend against [selling the U. S. stock markets short]…. Retail brokers normally require investors to hold any short-sale proceeds in U. S. dollars, usually earning no interest. The dollar, seen through my famously jaundiced eye, could lose more purchasing power than the security you sold short lost value…. I’ve got a much better idea, which is to borrow dollars and spend them to acquire foreign income-producing assets, using the income to pay the interest.”

Peter D. Schiff (1963) American entrepreneur, economist and author

Quotes from Crash Proof (2006)

Idea

“Question: If you could pick one cause that has gotten us here, what'd you say it is?
Ron Paul: Easy money. The Federal Reserve artificially lowering interest rates, deceiving the people, the investors, the savers, into believing that there's a lot of savings out there, and that we should invest more, build more houses, more cars. It's the malinvestment, which is every bit as dangerous, from the inflation of the money supply, as is the high prices that usually come.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Fox Business Network, March 24, 2009 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkJ1sa9mxCU 2000s, 2006-2009

Money, People, Cars, Question

“Binding obligations on investors and corporations must be incorporated into trade and investment agreements, and public courts must have jurisdiction to examine violations and impose sanctions on violators.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

2018, Report submitted to the UN Human Rights Council

“A good way of finding out who won a war, who lost a war, and what the war was about, is to ask who's cheering and who's depressed after it's over - this can give you interesting answers. So, for example, if you ask that question about the Second World War, you find out that the winners were the Nazis, the German industrialists who had supported Hitler, the Italian Fascists and the war criminals that were sent off to South America - they were all cheering at the end of the war. The losers of the war were the anti-fascist resistance, who were crushed all over the world. Either they were massacred like in Greece or South Korea, or just crushed like in Italy and France. That's the winners and losers. That tells you partly what the war was about. Now let's take the Cold War: Who's cheering and who's depressed? Let's take the East first. The people who are cheering are the former Communist Party bureaucracy who are now the capitalist entrepreneurs, rich beyond their wildest dreams, linked to Western capital, as in the traditional Third World model, and the new Mafia. They won the Cold War. The people of East Europe obviously lost the Cold War; they did succeed in overthrowing Soviet tyranny, which is a gain, but beyond that they've lost - they're in miserable shape and declining further. If you move to the West, who won and who lost? Well, the investors in General Motors certainly won. They now have this new Third World open again to exploitation”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

and they can use it against their own working classes. On the other hand, the workers in GM certainly didn't win, they lost. They lost the Cold War, because now there's another way to exploit them and oppress them and they're suffering from it. Forum with John Pilger and Harold Pinter in Islington, London, May 1994 https://web.archive.org/web/20000823015510/http://www.redpepper.org.uk/cularch/xalmeida.html. Quotes 1990s, 1990-1994

War, People, World, Dreams

“Nothing in finance is more fatuous and harmful, in our opinion, than the firmly established attitude of common stock investors regarding questions of corporate management. That attitude is summed up in the phrase: "If you don't like the management, sell your stock." […] The public owners seem to have abdicated all claim to control over the paid superintendents of their property”

Benjamin Graham (1894–1976) American investor

Source: The Intelligent Investor: The Classic Text on Value Investing (1949), Chapter I, What the Intelligent Investor Can Accomplish, p. 18

Question

“The dominant propaganda systems have appropriated the term "globalization" to refer to the specific version of international economic integration that they favor, which privileges the rights of investors and lenders, those of people being incidental. In accord with this usage, those who favor a different form of international integration, which privileges the rights of human beings, become "anti-globalist." This is simply vulgar propaganda, like the term "anti-Soviet" used by the most disgusting commissars to refer to dissidents. It is not only vulgar, but idiotic. Take the World Social Forum, called "anti-globalization" in the propaganda system -- which happens to include the media, the educated classes, etc., with rare exceptions. The WSF is a paradigm example of globalization. It is a gathering of huge numbers of people from all over the world, from just about every corner of life one can think of, apart from the extremely narrow, highly privileged elites who meet at the competing World Economic Forum, and are called "pro-globalization" by the propaganda system. An observer watching this farce from Mars would collapse in hysterical laughter at the antics of the educated classes.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Interview by Sniježana Matejčić, June 2005 http://www.galerija-rigo.hr/05/chomsky_en_2.htm. Quotes 2000s, 2005

Life, People, World, Education

“It didn’t end there [with genocide]. They passed law after law‚ taking land from our people. Yet investors never left the country. When they passed the Land Act of 1913‚ investors never left the country. Investors came into the country.”

Julius Malema (1981) South African political activist

On 4 March 2018, at the launch of the EFF's election registration campaign, Standard Bank arena, Johannesburg. As quoted by Nico Gous in Land in SA was taken through ‘genocide’ and will be returned: Malema https://www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2018-03-04-land-in-sa-was-taken-through-genocide-and-will-be-returned-malema/, Sunday Times (4 March 2018)

People, Law, Country

“I’m very much a free market capitalist, actually. I don’t agree with a kind of totalitarian, one government or sort of universal law. I think what will happen and what is happening now is, in the same way as… In the way that countries make themselves attractive to investors through different pieces of legislation they offer, whether it’s secrecy in the case of the Cayman Islands or Switzerland, I think the fact that some countries now are offering very robust publishing laws, it will be that as information is global, what you might see is that these big internet companies like Google or Facebook, that have their servers, will start to relocate those servers to countries where they have less interference. In a way, you’re creating a kind of free market of freedom of information law.”

Heather Brooke (1970) American journalist

Attributed, Chatham House Talk (September 28, 2011)

Law, Way, Thinking, Freedom

“The purchase of a bargain issue presupposes that the market's current appraisal is wrong, or at least that the buyer's idea of value is more likely to be right than the market's. In this process the investor sets his judgement against that of the market. To some this may seem arrogant or foolhardy.”

Benjamin Graham (1894–1976) American investor

Source: The Intelligent Investor: The Classic Text on Value Investing (1949), Chapter II, The Investor and Stock-Market Fluctuations, p. 38

Idea

“A just, peaceful, equitable and democratic world order must not be undermined by the activities of investors, speculators and transnational enterprises avid for immediate profit at the expense of social and economic progress.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

Mainstream human rights into trade agreements and WTO practice – UN expert urges in new report http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=20473&LangID=E#sthash.bn9VjkJJ.dpuf. 2016, Mainstream human rights into trade agreements and WTO practice – UN expert urges in new report

World, Peace

“The principal role of the mutual fund is to serve its investors.”

John Bogle (1929–2019)

Princeton thesis, 1951 ( http://www.vanguard.com/bogle_site/sp20051015.htm)

“The speculator is not an investor.”

Edwin Lefèvre book Reminiscences of a Stock Operator

Source: Reminiscences of a Stock Operator (1923), Chapter X, p. 114

“I am especially worried about the impact that investor-state-arbitrations (ISDS) have already had and foreseeably will have on human rights, in particular the provision which allows investors to challenge domestic legislation and administrative decisions if these can potentially reduce their profits.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

U.N. expert says secret trade deals threaten human rights http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/04/23/trade-rights-idUSL5N0XK54G20150423?feedType=RSS&feedName=everything&virtualBrandChannel=11563. 2015

Decision

“The stock of the greatest company in the world is crap if every investor already thinks it is the greatest company in the world.”

Andy Kessler (1958) American writer

Part VI, Burst, Morgan Stanley Tech Conference 2001, p. 229.
Running Money (2004) First Edition

World, Thinking

“It is possible to see Keynesian and Schumpeterian ideas as complementary. Keynes is about short-run economic fluctuations brought about by erratic variations in the willingness of investors and governments to spend; Schumpeter is about the long-run trajectory driven by the erratic march of technological progress. This complementarity only became clear later, after both men had died, when economic growth became an explicit objective of public policy and topic of systematic analysis. Schumpeter was left frustrated by the younger generation’s affinity for his rival. In any case, the “preliminary volume” never materialized.
The world turns. Today, some sixty years after their deaths, Schumpeter’s star probably outshines Keynes’s. The business cycle has receded in importance, partly because the large industrial economies have sprouted a more stable structure, and partly because the lessons that Keynes taught have been learned by central banks and finance ministries. Instead, long-term economic growth has moved to the top of the political and intellectual agenda, and that was Schumpeter’s topic. As Robert Lucas memorably put it, once you have begun to think about economic growth, it is hard to think about anything else. It is a pity that troubled old Schumpeter did not live to see the triumph of his obsession.”

Robert Solow (1924) American economist

"Heavy Thinker" (2007)

Death, Men, World, Star

“Now I’m not saying that Keynes was right about everything, that we should treat The General Theory as a sort of secular bible - the way that Marxists treat Das Kapital. But the essential truth of Keynes’s big idea - that even the most productive economy can fail if consumers and investors spend too little, that the pursuit of sound money and balanced budgets is sometimes (not always!) folly rather than wisdom - is as evident in today’s world as it was in the 1930s. And in these dangerous days, we ignore or reject that idea at the world economy’s peril.”

Paul Krugman (1953) American economist

"Why aren't we all Keynesians yet?", Fortune (Aug. 3, 1998)

Wisdom, Money, Truth, World

“China will not allow those Taiwanese investors that advocate Taiwan independence to make money here (in Mainland China).”

Zhang Zhijun (1953) Chinese politician

Zhang Zhijun (2016) cited in " China closes door on independence-espousing firms http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2016/12/03/2003660482" on Taipei Times, 3 December 2016.

Money

“The investor has the benefit of the stock market's daily and changing appraisal of his holdings, for whatever that appraisal may be worth, and, second, that the investor is able to increase or decrease his investment at the market's daily figure—if he chooses. Thus the existence of a quoted market gives the investor certain options which he does not have if his security is unquoted. But it does not impose the current quotation on an investor who prefers to take his idea of value from some other source.”

Benjamin Graham (1894–1976) American investor

Source: The Intelligent Investor: The Classic Text on Value Investing (1949), Chapter II, The Investor and Stock-Market Fluctuations, p. 41

Quotes, Idea, Change

“If the country is to flourish, capital must be invested in enterprise. But those who seek to draw upon other people's money must be wholly candid regarding the facts on which the investor's judgment is asked.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) 32nd President of the United States

Statement on Signing the Securities Bill http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=14654 (27 May 1933) 1930s

Money, People, Drawing, Country

“The engine driving the Kelly system is the "law of large numbers." In a 1713 treatise on probability, Swiss mathematician Jakob Bernoulli propounded a law that has been misunderstood by gamblers (and investors) ever since.”

William Poundstone (1955) American writer

Part Two, Blackjack, The Kelly Criterion Under The Hood, p. 102
Fortune's Formula (2005)

Law

“The regulatory chill caused by the mere existence of investor-State dispute settlements has effectively dissuaded many States from adopting much-needed health and environmental protection measures.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

Health

“Full service brokers, in this day and age of low cost mutual funds and discount brokers, are really nothing more than machines for ripping off retail investors.”

Joel Spolsky (1965) American blogger

"Wall Street Survival 101" http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/WallSt101.html

Age

“A study of the inter-American system published by the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London concluded that, while the US pays lip service to democracy, the real commitment is to "private, capitalist enterprise." When the rights of investors are threatened, democracy has to go; if these rights are safeguarded, killers and torturers will do just fine.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

" Our Commitment to Democracy https://chomsky.info/unclesam02/," p. 19 Quotes 1990s, 1990-1994, What Uncle Sam Really Wants, 1993

Democracy, Study

“Investors and transnational enterprises have invented new rules to suit their needs, rules that impinge on the regulatory space of States and disenfranchise the public.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

“I was beginning to understand, a little. “Is that why you’re a usurer?”
Madding chuckled. “I prefer the term investor. And my rates are perfectly fair, thank you.”
“Drug dealer, then.”
“I prefer the term independent apothecary—””

N. K. Jemisin book The Broken Kingdoms

Source: The Broken Kingdoms (2011), Chapter 4 “Frustration” (watercolor) (p. 68)

Understanding, Madness

“There is no need to adopt more “free trade agreements”, which are asymmetrical agreements providing privileges to investors but no enforceable obligations.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

“The probability of ten consecutive heads is 0.1 percent; thus, when you have millions of coin tossers, or investors, in the end there will be thousands of very successful practitioners of coin tossing, or stock picking.”

Alan Greenspan (1926) 13th Chairman of the Federal Reserve in the United States

Source: 2000s, The Age of Turbulence (2008), Chapter Twenty-Five, "The Delphic Future", p. 465.

Success

“"Average" isn't so hot at the race track given those steep track takes. "Average" is pretty decent for stocks, something like 6 percent above the inflation rate. For a buy-and -hold investor, commissions and taxes are small.”

William Poundstone (1955) American writer

Part Three, Arbitrage, This Is Not the Time To Buy Stocks, p. 134
Fortune's Formula (2005)

“Finding a good deal, the right business, the right people, the right investors, or whatever is just like dating. You must go to the market and talk to a lot of people, make a lot of offers, counteroffers, negotiate, reject and accept.”

Robert T. Kiyosaki (1947) American finance author , investor

Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money-That the Poor and the Middle Class Do Not!

People, Business

“Wiko, a French phone company, went from concept to company when the founders were shopping for parts in Shenzhen (as one does). Wiko had trouble raising money—few investors believed a new European phone company could succeed—so they took an investment from the Chinese manufacturer Tinno Mobile. Wiko is thus mostly Chinese, both owned and supplied by Tinno, but given its thin veneer of French design and marketing it looks like a local firm to the French. The resulting excitement over Wiko as a homegrown business helped them to become the second largest phone vendor in France (after Samsung, as usual). This preserves the pattern of “designed elsewhere, made in China,” but with the twist that ownership, not just sourcing and manufacturing, has now moved to China as well.”

Clay Shirky (1964) American technology writer

Little Rice: Smartphones, Xiaomi, and the Chinese Dream (2015)

Money, Business, Help, Parting

“The monetary history of the last four hundred years has been replete with financial crises. The pattern was that investor optimism increased as economies expanded, the rate of growth of credit increased and economic growth accelerated, and an increasing number of individuals began to invest for short-term capital gains rather than for the returns associated with the productivity of the assets they were acquiring. The increase in the supply of credit and more buoyant economic outlook often led to economic booms as investment spending increased in response to the more optimistic outlook and the greater availability of credit, and as household spending increased as personal wealth surged.”

Charles P. Kindleberger (1910–2003) American economic historian

Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises (1978), Ch. 13 : The Lessons of History and the Most Tumultuous Decades Ever

History, Optimism, Personality, Wealth

“The Independent Expert believes that a fundamental rethink is necessary and should result in an explicit definition of new priorities that puts the interests of billions of human beings who are deprived of the necessities of life ahead of those of foreign investors.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

Report of the Independent Expert on the adverse impact of World Bank policies on human rights and the realisation of a democratic and equitable international order
2017, Report submitted to the UN Human Rights Council

Life