Seth Klarman Quotes

SETH KLARMAN: Most of these characteristics are not permanent. Something broadly accepted can become controversial or even taboo. Information can become more or less available. Thus, an asset class deemed close to efficient at one point may become quite inefficient at another. European

Successful investors tend to be unemotional, allowing the greed and fear of others to play into their hands.

The value of a company selling a trendy product, such as television shopping, depends on the profitability of the product, the product life cycle, competitive barriers, and the ability of the company to replicate its current success. Investors are often overly optimistic about the sustainability of a trend, the ultimate degree of market penetration, and the size of profit margins.

There is nothing esoteric about value investing. It is simply the process of determining the value underlying a security and then buying it at a considerable discount from that value. It is really that simple. The greatest challenge is maintaining the requisite patience and discipline to buy only when prices are attractive and to sell when they are not, avoiding the short-term performance frenzy that engulfs most market participants.

Economist Paul Rosenstein-Rodan has pointed to the “tremble factor” in understanding human motivation. “In the building practices of ancient Rome, when scaffolding was removed from a completed Roman arch, the Roman engineer stood beneath. If the arch came crashing down, he was the first to know. Thus his concern for the quality of the arch was intensely personal, and it is not surprising that so many Roman arches have survived.” Why should investing be any different? Money managers who invested their own assets in parallel with clients would quickly abandon their relative-performance orientation.

Benjamin Graham understood that an asset or business worth $1 today could be worth 75 cents or $1.25 in the near future. He also understood that he might even be wrong about today’s value. Therefore Graham had no interest in paying $1 for $1 of value. There was no advantage in doing so, and losses could result. Graham was only interested in buying at a substantial discount from underlying value. By investing at a discount, he knew that he was unlikely to experience losses. The discount provided a margin of safety.

The second method of business valuation analyzes liquidation value, the expected proceeds if a company were to be dismantled and the assets sold off. Breakup value, one variant of liquidation analysis, considers each of the components of a business at its highest valuation, whether as part of a going concern or not.

At times a particular method may stand out as the most appropriate. Net present value would be most applicable, for example, in valuing a high-return business with stable cash flows such as a consumer-products company; its liquidation value would be far too low. Similarly, a business with regulated rates of return on assets such as a utility might best be valued using NPV analysis. Liquidation analysis is probably the most appropriate method for valuing an unprofitable business whose stock trades well below book value. A closed-end fund or other company that owns only marketable securities should be valued by the stock market method; no other makes sense.

Although at one time a measure of a business’s prosperity, it has become a relic: stocks should simply not be bought on the basis of their dividend yield. Too often struggling companies sport high dividend yields, not because the dividends have been increased, but because the share prices have fallen. Fearing that the stock price will drop further if the dividend is cut, managements maintain the payout, weakening the company even more.

Financially distressed and bankrupt securities, corporate recapitalizations, and exchange offers all fall into the category of asset conversions, in which investors’ existing holdings are exchanged for one or more new securities. Distressed and bankrupt businesses are often identified in the financial press; specialized publications and research services also provide information on such companies and their securities.

Value investing by its very nature is contrarian. Out-of-favor securities may be undervalued; popular securities almost never are. What the herd is buying is, by definition, in favor. Securities in favor have already been bid up in price on the basis of optimistic expectations and are unlikely to represent good value that has been overlooked.

There is another unique aspect to thrift conversions. Unlike many IPOs, in which insiders who bought at very low prices sell some of their shares at the time of the offering, in a thrift conversion insiders virtually always buy shares alongside the public and at the same price.

Owing to a debtor’s ability to reject contracts of nearly all types, a bankrupt company is frequently in a position to become a low-cost competitor in its industry upon reorganization. Unprofitable, high-cost facilities are closed or sold, above-market lease costs are reduced to market levels, and a company’s overstated assets are typically written down on its books to fair-market value, thereby reducing future depreciation charges. The bankruptcy process can sometimes serve as a salutary catharsis, allowing troubled firms the opportunity to improve their business operations.

In my view, investors should usually refrain from purchasing a “full position” (the maximum dollar commitment they intend to make) in a given security all at once. Those who fail to heed this advice may be compelled to watch a subsequent price decline helplessly, with no buying power in reserve. Buying a partial position leaves reserves that permit investors to “average down,” lowering their average cost per share, if prices decline.

You want a broker with sufficient clout within his or her firm to provide you with access to analysts and traders, one with experience to handle your account properly and to know when to call you and when not to waste your time. You don’t want a totally inexperienced broker who is learning at your expense, a complacent broker satisfied with mediocre results, or one so successful that your account is relatively unimportant.

The Most Important Thing and others, including Seth Klarman, Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett, Bruce Newberg, Michael Milken, Jacob Rothschild, Todd Combs, Roger Altman, Joel Greenblatt, Peter Kaufman and Doug Kass.

Warren Buffett is one of the most successful investors of the 20th century and a self-described “value investor.” He aims to buy stocks at a discount (below intrinsic value), so that even with a worst-case scenario, he can do well. This discount is referred to as the “margin of safety,” and it’s the bedrock principle of some of the brightest minds in the investing world (e.g., Seth Klarman). It doesn’t guarantee a good investment, but it allows room for error.

Emotional investors and speculators inevitably lose money.

Many unsuccessful investors regard the stock market as a way to make money without working rather than as a way to invest capital in order to earn a decent return

investors. I have been a student of the philosophy of value investing, which of course was established, executed, and popularized by superinvestors Benjamin Graham, Warren Buffet, and Seth Klarman among

Study the Opposites In addition to studying his competition in tech and early-stage investing, Marc studies value investors on the completely opposite side of the spectrum, such as Warren Buffett and Seth Klarman. This doesn’t mean they invest in the same types of companies; rather, the synergy is related to first principles.