Sooner or later, the market will do what it has to do to prove the majority wrong.

The company must be profitable. Preferably it will have increased its earnings for the past five years and there will have been no deficits over that period.

We do liquidation analysis and liquidation analysis only.

I suspect that my thinking is an eclectic mix, not pure net-net because I couldn’t do it anyway so you have to have a new something to hang your hat on. But the framework stays the same.

Just as many smart people fail in the investment business as stupid ones. Intellectually active people are particularly attracted to elegant concepts, which can have the effect of distracting them from the simpler, more fundamental truths.

I try to keep in mind Oscar Wilde's comment that "saints always have a past and sinners always have a future," so no investment should be ruled out simply on the basis of past history. We focus on liquidation analysis and liquidation analysis alone.

We always look at the margin of safety in the balance sheet and then worry about the business.