There is one thing of which I can assure you. If good performance of the fund is even a minor objective, any portfolio encompassing one hundred stocks (whether the manager is handling one thousand dollars or one billion dollars) is not being operated logically. The addition of the one hundredth stock simply can't reduce the potential variance in portfolio performance sufficiently to compensate for the negative effect its inclusion has on the overall portfolio expectation.

You have to turn over a lot of rocks to find those little anomalies. You have to find the companies that are off the map - way off the map.

In the end, alchemy, whether it is metallurgical or financial, fails. A base business can not be transformed into a golden business by tricks of accounting or capital structure. The man claiming to be a financial alchemist may become rich. But gullible investors rather than business achievements will usually be the source of his wealth.

You need a lot of curiosity for a long, long time.

I know that Congress will do the right thing.

If the reason for doing something is that everyone else is doing it, it's not a good enough reason.

We don't have to be smarter than the rest. We have to be more disciplined than the rest.