If you look at the great frauds of all time, Enron had that phantom trading floor. What Herbalife has is it has phantom or fictitious customers.
Bill AckmanHerbalife: the customers are fictitious, the business opportunity is a scam, the university degree is a fraud.
Bill AckmanShort-term market and economic prognostication is largely a fool’s errand, we invest according to a strategy that makes the need to rely on short-term market or economic assessments largely irrelevant.
Bill AckmanI'm not emotional about investments. Investing is something where you have to be purely rational and not let emotion affect your decision making - just the facts.
Bill AckmanIf I believe that I am right, I will take it to the end of the earth until I am proven right.
Bill AckmanAs a result of overdiversification, their (active managers) returns get watered down. Diversification covers up ignorance. Active managers haven't done enough research into any of their companies. If managers have 200 positions, do you think they know what's going on at any one of those companies at this moment?
Bill AckmanIt is a certainty that Herbalife is a pyramid scheme. We believe it's harming a population of low-income, principally Hispanic people in the U.S. to benefit a handful of super wealthy people at the top of the pyramid.
Bill AckmanIf you think of the typical Herbalife distributor and their level of sophistication, to this day I still don't understand the marketing plan - true story.
Bill AckmanI think a very good system in a world with a lot of passive investors is one in which there are at least a few entrepreneurial investors, prepared to say what they think, prepared to propose a change in management, change in strategy, change in cost structure, capital structure.
Bill Ackman