“Investing Requires Qualities Of Temperament Way More

“You Can’t Make A Good Deal With A Bad Person.”

We Rarely Use Much Debt And, When We Do, We Attempt To Structure It On A Long-term Fixed Rate Basis. We Will Reject Interesting Opportunities Rather Than Over-leverage Our Balance Sheet. This Conservatism Has Penalized Our Results But It Is The Only Behavior That Leaves Us Comfortable, Considering Our Fiduciary Obligations To Policyholders, Depositors, Lenders And The Many Equity Holders Who Have Committed Unusually Large Portions Of Their Net Worth To Our Care.

Somebody's Buying These Treasury Bills At 1/20th Of One Percent. Consuming About $2 Billion A Day Of Goods And Services Beyond What We're Producing. In Other Words, The Rest Of The World Sends About $2 Billion A Day Net Of Something.we Got To Send Them Something In Return, Don't We. So We Send Them Little Pieces Of Paper.

Like Most Trends, At The Beginning It's Driven By Fundamentals, At Some Point Speculation Takes Over. What The Wise Man Does In The Beginning, The Fool Does In The End.

An Investor Should Ordinarily Hold A Small Piece Of An Outstanding Business With The Same Tenacity That An Owner Would Exhibit If He Owned All Of That Business.