A margin of safety is achieved when securities are purchased at prices sufficiently below underlying value to allow for human error, bad luck, or extreme volatility in a complex, unpredictable and rapidly changing world.

Right at the core, the mainstream has it backwards. Warren Buffett often quips that the first rule of investing is to not lose money, and the second rule is to not forget the first rule. Yet few investors approach the world with such a strict standard of risk avoidance.

Short-term performance envy causes many of the shortcomings that lock most investors into a perpetual cycle of underachievement. Watch your competitors not out of jealousy but out of respect and focus your efforts not on replicating others' portfolios but on looking for opportunities where they are not. The only way for investors to significantly outperform is to periodically stand far apart from the crowd, something few are willing, or able, to do.

Why should the immediate opportunity set be the only one considered, when tomorrow's may well be considerably more fertile than today's?

The way to maximize outcome is to focus on the process.

The stock market is the story of cycles and of the human behavior that is responsible for overreactions in both directions.

You probably would not choose to dine at a restaurant whose chef always ate elsewhere. I do eat my own cooking, and I don't "dine out" when it comes to investing.