There is no amount of bad news that the markets cannot see past.

We worry top-down, but we invest bottom-up

Here’s how to know if you have the makeup to be an investor. How would you handle the following situation? Let’s say you own a Procter & Gamble in your portfolio and the stock price goes down by half. Do you like it better? If it falls in half, do you reinvest dividends? Do you take cash out of savings to buy more? If you have the confidence to do that, then you’re an investor. If you don’t, you’re not an investor, you’re a speculator, and you shouldn’t be in the stock market in the first place.

While knowing how to value businesses is essential for investment success, the first and perhaps most important step in the investment process is knowing where to look for opportunities

Pressure to produce over the short term - a gun to the head of everyone - encourages excessive risk taking which manifests itself in several ways - fully invested posture at all times, the use of leverage, and a market centric orientation that makes it difficult to stand apart from the crowd and take a long term perspective.

A commodity doesn't have the same characteristics as a security, characteristics that allow for analysis. Other than a recent sale or appreciation due to inflation, analyzing the current or future worth of a commodity is nearly impossible.

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