I hated discussing ideas with investors, because then I become a Defender of the Idea, and that influences your thought process.

When I stand on my special-issue "Intelligent Investor" ladder and peer out over the frenzied crowd, I see very few others doing the same. Many stocks remain overvalued, and speculative excess - both on the upside and on the downside - is embedded in the frenzy around stocks of all stripes. And yes, I am talking about March 2001, not March 2000.

Early on, people invested in me because of my letters and then, somehow, after they invested, they stopped reading them.

The late 90s almost forced me to identify myself as a value investor, because I thought what everybody else was doing was insane.

I just really like to find my own ideas.

In essence, the stock market represents three separate categories of business. They are, adjusted for inflation, those with shrinking intrinsic value, those with approximately stable intrinsic value, and those with steadily growing intrinsic value. The preference, always, would be to buy a long-term franchise at a substantial discount from growing intrinsic value.

I don't believe anything unless I understand it inside out. And even if I understand something, it is not uncommon that I disagree with accepted view (even if it's a Nobel laureate).