Literally draw a detailed map-like an organization chart-of interlocking ownership and affiliates, many of which were also publicly traded. So, identifying one stock led him to a dozen other potential investments. To tirelessly pull threads is the lesson that I learned from Mike Price.

Patience and discipline can make you look foolishly out of touch until they make you look prudent and even prescient

There is no amount of bad news that the markets cannot see past.

As Buffett has often observed, value investing is not a concept that can be learned and gradually applied over time. It is either absorbed and adopted at once, or it is never truly learned.

Warren Buffett once wrote that value investing is like an inoculation--it either takes or it doesn't--and when you explain to somebody what it is and how it works and why it works and show them the returns, either they get it or they don't.

The risk of an investment is described by both the probability and the potential amount of loss. The risk of an investment-the probability of an adverse outcome-is partly inherent in its very nature. A dollar spent on biotechnology research is a riskier investment than a dollar used to purchase utility equipment. The former has both a greater probability of loss and a greater percentage of the investment at stake.

The inability to hold cash and the pressure to be fully invested at all times meant that when the plug was pulled out of the tub, all boats dropped as the water rushed down the drain.