The stock market is a wonderfully efficient mechanism for transferring wealth from the impatient to the patient.

I never attempt to make money on the stock market. I buy on the assumption that they could close the market the next day and not reopen it for five years.

We really can say no in 10 seconds or so to 90%+ of all the things that come along simply because we have these filters.

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. You may find local companies that have nothing wrong with them at all. A company that I found, Western Insurance Securities, was trading for $3/share when it was earning $20/share!! I tried to buy up as much of it as possible. No one will tell you about these businesses. You have to find them.

John Maynard Keynes essentially said, don't try and figure out what the market is doing. Figure out a business you understand, and concentrate.

Investors have to remember: corporate profits are going up, but stocks are going up faster. How can that continue indefinitely? Investors can only earn what companies themselves can earn; the government or the markets themselves don't kick anything in. How can you get anything more out of a farm than what it grows?

It's just that I landed up in a terrific capitalist system. One that pays people who allocate capital extraordinarily well. Intrinsically, I'm not worth as much as somebody who invents something that could improves people's life, or health or whatever.