I think the exercise of trying to figure out how to simplify concepts has been incredibly helpful to me over the last 13 years of teaching and I hope my students have benefited from it.

Over the long term, despite significant drops from time to time, stocks (especially an intelligently selected stock portfolio) will be one of your best investment options. The trick is to GET to the long term. Think in terms of 5 years, 10 years and longer. Do your planning and asset allocation ahead of time. Choose a portion of your assets to invest in the stock market - and stick with it! Yes, the bad times will come, but over the truly long term, the good times will win out - and I hope the lessons from 2008 will help get you there to enjoy them.

The secret to investing is to figure out the value of something - and then pay a lot less.

Look down, not up, when making your initial investment decision. If you don’t lose money, most of the remaining alternatives are good ones.

I think the exercise of trying to figure out how to simplify concepts has been incredibly helpful to me over the last 13 years of teaching and I hope my students have benefited from it.

It just seems logical that sticking to investing in only a small number of companies that you understand well, rather than moving down the list to your thirtieth or fiftieth favorite pick, would create a much greater potential to earn above-average investment returns.

If you spend your energies looking for and analysing situations not closely followed by other informed investors, your chance of finding bargains greatly increases.