We live on a finite planet. We have finite resources, and we're running out of good, arable land.

There is no single theory that is used in economics that considers the finite nature of resources. It's shocking.

Volatility is a symptom that people have no idea of the underlying value-that they have stopped playing the asset game. They're not buying because it's a company with certain attributes. They're buying because the price is rising. People are playing games not related to any concept at all of what the long-term value of the enterprise is. And they know it.

The pure administration of Graham-and-Doddery really needs a long-term lock-up like Warren Buffett has, or it will have occasional quite dreadful client problems.

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

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.

By background I'm both a Quaker and a Yorkshireman, which I like to call double jeopardy.