The investment business has taught me – increasingly as the years have passed – that people, especially investors (and, I believe, Americans), prefer good news and wishful thinking to bad news; and that there are always vested interests to offer facile, optimistic alternatives to the bad news.

Equities are boring; bonds are disgusting.

There is a lot of pain still to be had in the equity markets, particularly aimed at the risky end of the spectrum. We think the fair value on the market is about a third lower in the U.S. . .

I would say that financial markets are very inefficient, and capable of extremes of being completely dysfunctional.

Profit margins are probably the most mean-reverting series in finance, and if profit margins do not mean-revert, then something has gone badly wrong with capitalism. If high profits do not attract competition, there is something wrong with the system and it is not functioning properly.

Although value is a weak force in any single year, it becomes a monster over several years. Like gravity, it slowly wears down the opposition.

If stocks are attractive and you don't buy, you don't just look like an idiot, you are an idiot.