Avoid organizing investment team into silos.

If an asset has cash flow or the likelihood of cash flow in the near term and is not purely dependment on what a future buyer might pay, then it's an investment. If an asset's value is totally dependent on the amount a future buyer might pay, then its purchase is speculation.

Having great clients is the key to investment success.

Avoiding where others go wrong is an important step in achieving investment success. In fact, it almost assures it.

All investors must come to terms with the relentless continuity of the investment process.

In a rising market, everyone makes money and a value philosophy is unnecessary. But because there is no certain way to predict what the market will do, one must follow a value philosophy at all times.

Value investors will not invest in businesses that they cannot readily understand or ones they find excessively risky. Hence few value investors will own the shares of technology companies. Many also shun commercial banks, which they consider to have unanalyzable assets, as well as property and casualty insurance companies, which have both unanalyzable assets and liabilities.