Never stop reading. History doesn't repeat, but it does rhyme.

Value investing is the discipline of buying shares at a significant discount from their current underlying values and holding them until more of their value is realised. The element of a bargain is the key to the process.

Investing today may well be harder than it has been at any time in our three decades of existence.

Value investors should completely exit a security by the time it reaches full value; owning overvalued securities is the realm of speculators.

Value investing is risk aversion.

The government - the ultimate short-term-oriented player - cannot withstand much pain in the economy or the financial markets. Bailouts and rescues are likely to occur, though not with sufficient predictability for investors to comfortably take advantage. The government will take enormous risks in such interventions, especially if the expenses can be conveniently deferred to the future. Some of the price-tag is in the form of back- stops and guarantees, whose cost is almost impossible to determine.

In a world in which most investors appear interested in figuring out how to make money every second and chase the idea du jour, there's also something validating about the message that it's okay to do nothing and wait for opportunities to present themselves or to pay off. That's lonely and contrary a lot of the time, but reminding yourself that that's what it takes is quite helpful.