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

We work really hard never to get confused with what we know from what we think or hope or wish.

In contrast to the speculators preoccupation with rapid gain, value investors demonstrate their risk aversion by striving to avoid loss.

Targeting investment returns leads investors to focus on potential upside rather on downside risk ... rather than targeting a desired rate of return, even an eminently reasonable one, investors should target risk.

Speculators are obsessed with predicting: guessing the direction of stock prices. Every morning on cable television, every afternoon on the stock market report, every weekend in Barron's, every week in dozens of market newsletters, and whenever business people get together. In reality, no one knows what the market will do; trying to predict it is a waste of time, and investing based upon that prediction is a purely speculative undertaking.

When a Wall Street analyst or broker expresses optimism, investors must take it with a grain of salt.

As value investors, our business is to buy bargains that financial market theory says do not exist. We've delivered great returns to our clients for a quarter century-a dollar invested at inception in our largest fund is now worth over 94 dollars, a 20% net compound return. We have achieved this not by incurring high risk as financial theory would suggest, but by deliberately avoiding or hedging the risks that we identified.