At the worst possible moment, when your fund is down because cheap things have gotten cheaper, you need to have capital, to have clients who will actually love the phone call and-most of the time, if not all the time-add, rather than subtract, capital.
Seth KlarmanWe suppose that could be considered a hedged position for the awards committee, one that would never occur in the hard sciences such as physics and chemistry, where a prize shared among three with divergent views would be an embarrassing mistake or a bad joke. While a Nobel Prize might well be the culmination of a life’s work, shouldn’t the work accurately describe the real world?
Seth KlarmanIf you are predisposed to be patient, disciplined and psychologically appreciate the idea of buying bargains, then you're likely to be good at it. If you have a need for action, if you want to be involved in the new and exciting technological breakthroughs of our time, that's great, but you're not a value investor, and you shouldn't be one.
Seth Klarman