People should be highly sceptical of anyone's including their own, ability to predict the future, and instead pursue strategies that can survive whatever may occur.

While it might seem that anyone can be a value investor, the essential characteristics of this type of investor-patience, discipline, and risk aversion-may well be genetically determined.

Typically, we make money when we buy things. We count the profits later, but we know we have captured them when we buy the bargain.

Depressions aren't good but the depression mentality is good.

Beware leverage in all its forms. Borrowers - individual, corporate, or government - should always match fund their liabilities against the duration of their assets. Borrowers must always remember that capital markets can be extremely fickle, and that it is never safe to assume a maturing loan can be rolled over. Even if you are unleveraged, the leverage employed by others can drive dramatic price and valuation swings; sudden unavailability of leverage in the economy may trigger an economic downturn.

Sometimes buying early on the way down looks like being wrong, but it isn't.

Many LBOs are man-made disasters. When the price paid is excessive, the equity portion of an LBO is really an out-of-the-money call option. Many fiduciaries placed large amounts of the capital under their stewardship into such options in 2006 and 2007.