In the long run, investing is not about markets at all. Investing is about enjoying the returns earned by businesses.

I would always advise young people to follow their star - not my star. They have to live their own life. If they decide they want to go into the investment business, do it, but make it a better business than it is today.

In Las Vegas we all know that it's the croupiers who win. At the race track, it's those who control the handle who win. State lotteries, does anybody think the participants in the lottery win? No. The state wins.

The relationship between executive CEO pay, stock performance is tenuous and not easily unscrambled, just one of myriad factors that affect the price of a stock.

Rely on the ordinary virtues that intelligent, balanced human beings have relied on for centuries: common sense, thrift, realistic expectations, patience, and perseverance.

The grim irony of investing, then, is that we investors as a group not only don't get what we pay for, we get precisely what we don't pay for. So if we pay for nothing, we get everything.

If you're very talented and keep winning, you'll do just fine. It may take a while. But the talent is hard to identify and talent is hard to tell from luck. There's an awful lot of luck in this business. Past performance is not helpful in judging future performance.