I talk to hundreds of companies a year and spend hour after hour in heady pow-wows with CEOs, financial analysts and my colleagues in the mutual-fund business, but I stumble onto the big winners in extracurricular situations, the same way you do.

Everyone has the brain power to make money in stocks. Not everyone has the stomach.

All the math you need in the stock market you get in the fourth grade.

You only need a few good stocks in your lifetime. I mean how many times do you need a stock to go up ten-fold to make a lot of money? Not a lot.

The biggest winners are surprises to me, and takeovers are even more surprising. It takes years, not months, to produce big results.

There's lots of stocks out there and all you need is a few of 'em. That's been my philosophy.

There's no shame in losing money on a stock. Everybody does it. What is shameful is to hold on to a stock, or worse, to buy more of it when the fundamentals are deteriorating.