Why You Should Ignore Your Portfolio for Months at a Time

This is part two of a guest post series from Monevator, a personal blog that provides money tips and motivation for private investors. You can find:

• part one – Beat Market Volatility by Being Boring
• part three – Why you Should Invest When the Market is Falling

Strategy 2: Try to ignore your portfolio for months at a time

Even better than a boring account is one you don’t bother checking at all. It might seem ridiculous not to watch your portfolio like a hawk, but if seeing yournet worth fluctuate makes you unhappy and scares you out of the stock market, then checking your performance is counterproductive.

Warren Buffett famously implores investors to buy stocks for the long-term, and he’s done quite well. How long is long-term? Certainly longer than the horizons of private investors who check the prices of a stock they bought 60 minutes after assuming ownership. (Yes, that includes me! Editor’s note: Me too!)

Buffett once said, “I buy on the assumption that they could close the market the next day and not reopen it for five years”. Buffett is so confident in the businesses he buys that the daily fluctuations in their value aren’t a concern. I wouldn’t go that far – I’m not as sure of my ability as I am of Buffett’s – which is one of many reasons why I’m not as rich as him. But I can tell you that checking your portfolio every day (let alone every hour) is guaranteed to make you unhappy.

The reason is that while stocks, in aggregate, have always gone up over the truly long-term, their value can go anywhere over shorter time periods.

Nassim Taleb illustrates this really well in his excellent book, Fooled By Randomness. Assume, Taleb suggests, that you are investing in a market with 15% returns and 10% volatility per annum. This equates to a 93% probably of success in any given year. Pretty good odds, eh? Over shorter timescales, though, the picture is different.

Here are the chances of success with Taleb’s example investment over different timescales:

Scale – Probability
1 year – 93%
1 quarter – 77%
1 month – 67%
1 day – 54%
1 hour – 51.3%
1 minute – 50.17%
1 second – 50.02%

Personally, I find these figures really interesting. In the ultra short-term, even an ultimately successful investment is barely more likely to be up than down.

Now, Taleb asks us to imagine a fictitious dentist who checks the above investment every day.

At the end of every day the dentist will be emotionally drained. A minute-by-minute examination of his performance means that each day (assuming eight hours per day) he will have 241 pleasurable minutes against 239 unpleasurable ones.

Psychologists have shown that we feel pain from losses more than we feel pleasure from gains. Over the short-term, the pain of seeing losses from our stocks will outweigh the pleasure. The danger then is we sell out to stop the pain.

In contrast, if the dentist only checked his portfolio once a month, then as 67% of his months will be positive he’d have only four miserable sessions per year, versus eight good ones.

Checking yearly, he’d be even happier with his performance. Only in one year out of 20 would he drill unnecessary holes on unsuspecting patients to work off his anger. The other 19 years, he’d be thrilled.

Taleb’s specific investment is invented, but it is directly comparable to investing in the stock market. Most of us hold our investments for the long-term, yet we monitor their performance regularly over short periods of time, exposing ourselves to inevitable anguish.

Over 40 years of our investing for retirement, history suggests investors in stocks will do very well. Over a month, let alone a day, almost anything can happen.

So why worry too much along the way? If you’re not a stock market junkie, don’t become one.

Have faith, and keep up with regular investments. Check your portfolio once a year, where you might also consider rebalancing between the various asset classes such as stocks and bonds.

You’ll almost certainly end up richer than the day trader next door.

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warren buffett investment strategy

Warrenn Buffett is a real investment guru who earned his enormous assets by investing in capital markets and with strict adherence to certain rules which every investor knows but few respects. In fact Warren Buffett investing strategy may have for ordinary investors more negatives than positives and ultimately may lead to the desired profit.

One of the reasons is the size of transactions and volume of funds which most investors have only dreamed of. Buffett can afford to invest billions of dollars, which his company Berkshire Hathaway has which allows him to buy his interest for shares in companies. At the same time it provides a better bargaining position when entering into the company for an interesting price.

Another related significant difference compared with the ordinary investor is that Buffett often buy shares to own that company (or at least significant part). As an example can be Coca Cola (KO), Wells Fargo (WFC), Procter and Gamble (PG), and last but not least mentioned Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp. (BNI), which make up the majority of its entire portfolio. He often buy preferred stocks selected companies that give quite an interesting advantage over ordinary investors.

It also reflects the basic principles of long-term investment horizon (and its strict compliance), buying stocks of well-established companies whose functioning well understood by the investor at a low price and limited diversification (with Berkshire Hathaway Buffett owns more than 40 titles from various sectors such as consumer goods, finance, energy, industry, health, etc.).

In recent years, the Buffett and his investment company quite significantly deviates from the established rules which brought him his fortune. The first problem is the purchase of shares of companies in terms of fundamental analysis do not meet his criteria of values and eventually some of them had to quickly get rid of. Examples can be expensive buying shares in recent years, like Anheuser Busch (BUD), Wrigley (WWY.BA), Conoco Philips COP) or two Irish banks, which recorded big losses.

Perhaps the biggest disappointment for many investors seeking to invest on the basis Buffett's rules is a relatively large amount of funds that are kept in derivative instruments. Buffett has always been known for his very negative attitude to derivatives. Even though he sold options with a value of 4 billion U.S. dollars. It is also a fairly risky naked put options.

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Warren Buffett's Recommended Reading List

We're back with the latest iteration of our recommended reading list series. This time around we feature the favorite reads of none other than the Oracle of Omaha himself, Warren Buffett. Over time, he has recommended various books and here is the comprehensive list:

Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits by Phil Fisher: Regarding this book, Buffett said that, "I sought out Phil Fisher after reading his Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits and Other Writings. When I met him, I was as impressed by the man as by his ideas. A thorough understanding of the business, obtained by using Phil’s techniques . . . enables one to make intelligent investment commitments."

The Smartest Guys in the Room by Bethany McLean: This was recommended in Buffett's annual letter from 2003 and details the rise and fall of Enron.

The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham: This is an obvious choice as Buffett has said that this is "the most important investment book" and in particular has highlighted chapters 8 and 20 as essential.

John Bogle on Investing: The First 50 Years by John Bogle. This book is more aimed at the fund investing crowd given Bogle's expertise (Vanguard funds). In the past, Buffett has advocated investors who don't have much time on their hands to invest in index funds.

The Essays of Warren Buffett by Warren Buffett & edited by Larry Cunningham: There's no better way to learn from Buffett than through his own words. Buffett would agree as he says "The most representative book on my thinking is what Larry Cunningham put together."

Sam Walton: Made in America by Sam Walton: Another read Buffett recommended back in 2003, this book details how Walmart was built from the ground up.

And while this next pick is not from Buffett, we wanted to add it to the list because it is an in-depth biography of him. Those of you interested in the investing legend himself should check out The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life by Alice Schroeder.


That wraps up Buffet's favorite picks. Make sure to check out some other books recommended by great investors:

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Warren Buffett on Charlie Rose's Show

CHARLIE ROSE: Warren Buffett is here. As you know, he is perhaps the world’s most respected investor. He’s also chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway.

He has been on this program many times. I last spoke with him over a year ago at the peak of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. At that time, he said that America had been struck by an economic Pearl Harbor, but much has changed since then, and he’s here to tell us how he views a global and American economy in recovery.

His own company reflects the progress made in recent months. Last week, Berkshire Hathaway struck a $26 billion deal to buy all of Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad, the largest acquisition in company history. He called the deal an all-in wager on the American economy.He is in New York for a town hall event that he held with Bill Gates at Columbia University yesterday. He graciously agreed to stay over in New York an extra night, and I am pleased to have a good friend of this program and a good friend of mine back at this table. Welcome.

WARREN BUFFETT: Thank you, Charlie. Pleased to be here.

CHARLIE ROSE: Great to see you. It has been, certainly from the middle of 2008 to the middle of 2009, one incredible year.

WARREN BUFFETT: One incredible year. One to a lifetime, I hope.

CHARLIE ROSE: Yes. Tell me about it for you.

WARREN BUFFETT: Well, it was-- it really was an extraordinary time in this country. We came closer to a financial meltdown than certainly any time I have ever seen, and probably in certain respects even -- there was even more panic than the Great Depression, because it came on so fast and so unexpected.

And the whole country wanted to deleverage, corporations, individuals, and fortunately we had a government that responded. It was -- when we talked last, it was a little question of whether Congress would respond like they should. They finally did, and I -- I felt they would in the end. I mean, in the end, they come together for things that are this vital to the country. But we had the right people in Washington. If we’d had a group that behaved like a deer in the headlines, that deer would have gotten run over.

CHARLIE ROSE: So Paulson and Bernanke and Geithner were the right people at the right time, and you don’t know what might have happened if others had been in those positions of power.

WARREN BUFFETT: I can think of others-- I’m not going to name them-- but I can think of others where the ending would have been with us in the abyss rather than just peering down into it.

CHARLIE ROSE: You made some investments during that period.

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52 Must Read Quotes from Legendary Investor – Warren Buffett

Warren Buffett is without question the most successful investor of our time (and possibly of all time). His savvy deal making abilities coupled with his creative and cheerful personality allowed him to achieve success like no other.

While searching the web for the comments he’s made through the years, I found many insightful comments that truly show off Mr. Buffett’s knowledge so I want to share 52 of these with you below! Let me know what you think!

1. A public-opinion poll is no substitute for thought.
2. Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.
3. I always knew I was going to be rich. I don’t think I ever doubted it for a minute.
4. I am quite serious when I say that I do not believe there are, on the whole earth besides, so many intensified bores as in these United States. No man can form an adequate idea of the real meaning of the word, without coming here.
5. I buy expensive suits. They just look cheap on me.



6. I don’t have a problem with guilt about money. The way I see it is that my money represents an enormous number of claim checks on society. It’s like I have these little pieces of paper that I can turn into consumption. If I wanted to, I could hire 10,000 people to do nothing but paint my picture every day for the rest of my life. And the GNP would go up. But the utility of the product would be zilch, and I would be keeping those 10,000 people from doing AIDS research, or teaching, or nursing. I don’t do that though. I don’t use very many of those claim checks. There’s nothing material I want very much. And I’m going to give virtually all of those claim checks to charity when my wife and I die.
7. I don’t look to jump over 7-foot bars: I look around for 1-foot bars that I can step over.
8. 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.
9. If a business does well, the stock eventually follows.
10. If past history was all there was to the game, the richest people would be librarians.
11. If you’re in the luckiest 1 per cent of humanity, you owe it to the rest of humanity to think about the other 99 per cent.
12. In the business world, the rear view mirror is always clearer than the windshield.
13. Investors making purchases in an overheated market need to recognize that it may often take an extended period for the value of even an outstanding company to catch up with the price they paid.
14. It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.
15. It’s better to hang out with people better than you. Pick out associates whose behavior is better than yours and you’ll drift in that direction.
16. It’s far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price.
17. I’ve reluctantly discarded the notion of my continuing to manage the portfolio after my death – abandoning my hope to give new meaning to the term ‘thinking outside the box.’
18. Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote.
19. Look at market fluctuations as your friend rather than your enemy; profitfrom folly rather than participate in it.
20. Long ago, Sir Isaac Newton gave us three laws of motion, which were the work of genius. But Sir Isaac’s talents didn’t extend to investing: He lost a bundle in the South Sea Bubble, explaining later, ‘I can calculate the movement of the stars, but not the madness of men.’ If he had not been traumatized by this loss, Sir Isaac might well have gone on to discover the Fourth Law of Motion: For investors as a whole, returns decrease as motion increases
21. Most people get interested in stocks when everyone else is. The time to get interested is when no one else is. You can’t buy what is popular and do well.
22. Never count on making a good sale. Have the purchase price be so attractive that even a mediocre sale gives good results.
23. Of the billionaires I have known, money just brings out the basic traits in them. If they were jerks before they had money, they are simply jerks with a billion dollars.
24. Only buy something that you’d be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for 10 years.
25. Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked.
26. Our favorite holding period is forever.



27. Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.
28. Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing.
29. Risk is a part of God’s game, alike for men and nations.
30. Rule No.1: Never lose money. Rule No.2: Never forget rule No.1.
31. Wall Street is the only place that people ride to work in a Rolls Royce to get advice from those who take the subway.
32. The business schools reward difficult complex behavior more than simple behavior, but simple behavior is more effective.
33. The investor of today does not profit from yesterday’s growth.
34. The line separating investment and speculation, which is never bright and clear, becomes blurred still further when most market participants have recently enjoyed triumphs. Nothing sedates rationality like large doses of effortless money. After a heady experience of that kind, normally sensible people drift into behavior akin to that of Cinderella at the ball. They know that overstaying the festivities — that is, continuing to speculate in companies that have gigantic valuations relative to the cash they are likely to generate in the future — will eventually bring on pumpkins and mice. But they nevertheless hate to miss a single minute of what is one helluva party. Therefore, the giddy participants all plan to leave just seconds before midnight. There’s a problem, though: They are dancing in a room in which the clocks have no hands.
35. The only time to buy these is on a day with no “y” in it.
36. The smarter the journalists are, the better off society is. For to a degree, people read the press to inform themselves-and the better the teacher, the better the student body.
37. There are all kinds of businesses that Charlie and I don’t understand, but that doesn’t cause us to stay up at night. It just means we go on to the next one, and that’s what the individual investor should do.
38. There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult.
39. Time is the friend of the wonderful company, the enemy of the mediocre.
40. Value is what you get.
41. We believe that according the name ‘investors’ to institutions that trade actively is like calling someone who repeatedly engages in one-night stands a ‘romantic.’
42. We don’t get paid for activity, just for being right. As to how long we’ll wait, we’ll wait indefinitely.
43. We enjoy the process far more than the proceeds.
44. We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful.
45. We’ve long felt that the only value of stock forecasters is to make fortune tellers look good. Even now, Charlie and I continue to believe that short-term market forecasts are poison and should be kept locked up in a safe place, away from children and also from grown-ups who behave in the market like children.
46. When a management team with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact.
47. Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.
48. Why not invest your assets in the companies you really like? As Mae West said, “Too much of a good thing can be wonderful”.
49. Wide diversification is only required when investors do not understand what they are doing.
50. You do things when the opportunities come along. I’ve had periods in my life when I’ve had a bundle of ideas come along, and I’ve had long dry spells. If I get an idea next week, I’ll do something. If not, I won’t do a damn thing.
51. You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don’t do too many things wrong.
52. Your premium brand had better be delivering something special, or it’s not going to get the business

His savvy deal making abilities coupled with his creative and cheerful personality allowed him to achieve stock market success like no other. So it’s really no luck that he’s named the wealthiest man of 2008 and hope that you’ve learned something from these quotes. Which one is your favorite? Personally, I really like #30 – Never lose money!

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Warren Buffett Speaks: 25 Best Warren Buffett Quotes on His Strategies, Investments, and Cheap Suits

He’s called the Oracle of Omaha, and for good reason: not only is he one of the best investors of all time, but he’s also a witty communicator. If you read one ofBerkshire Hathaway’s annual shareholder letters (BTW–I love their Web site design!), you’ll feel like Warren Buffett is one of the Good Guys–someone you can trust, someone who will tell it like it is, and someone who’s always willing to laugh with you at mistakes.

Here are twenty-five awesome quotes from the man himself. I find these quotes to be especially comforting when you’re ‘financially depressed’–after all, he views a market slump as a good thing!–so I hope these can remind everyone that we just need to do the basics, and we”ll be OK. Be a consistent net saver, buy the market through ups and downs, be a decent human being, and rest easy.

On Investing

1. “Rule No.1: Never lose money. Rule No.2: Never forget rule No.1.”
2. “It’s far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price.”
3. “Only buy something that you’d be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for 10 years.”
4. “We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful.”
5. “Why not invest your assets in the companies you really like? As Mae West said, “Too much of a good thing can be wonderful”.”

On Success

1. “Of the billionaires I have known, money just brings out the basic traits in them. If they were jerks before they had money, they are simply jerks with a billion dollars.”
2. “The business schools reward difficult complex behavior more than simple behavior, but simple behavior is more effective.”
3. “You do things when the opportunities come along. I’ve had periods in my life when I’ve had a bundle of ideas come along, and I’ve had long dry spells. If I get an idea next week, I’ll do something. If not, I won’t do a damn thing.”
4. “Can you really explain to a fish what it’s like to walk on land? One day on land is worth a thousand years of talking about it, and one day running a business has exactly the same kind of value.”
5. “You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don’t do too many things wrong.”

On Helping Others

1. “If you’re in the luckiest 1 per cent of humanity, you owe it to the rest of humanity to think about the other 99 per cent.”
2. “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.”
3. “I don’t have a problem with guilt about money. The way I see it is that my money represents an enormous number of claim checks on society. It’s like I have these little pieces of paper that I can turn into consumption. If I wanted to, I could hire 10,000 people to do nothing but paint my picture every day for the rest of my life. And the GNP would go up. But the utility of the product would be zilch, and I would be keeping those 10,000 people from doing AIDS research, or teaching, or nursing. I don’t do that though. I don’t use very many of those claim checks. There’s nothing material I want very much. And I’m going to give virtually all of those claim checks to charity when my wife and I die.”
4. “It’s class warfare, my class is winning, but they shouldn’t be.”
5. “My family won’t receive huge amounts of my net worth. That doesn’t mean they’ll get nothing. My children have already received some money from me and Susie and will receive more. I still believe in the philosophy – FORTUNE quoted me saying this 20 years ago – that a very rich person should leave his kids enough to do anything but not enough to do nothing.”

On Life

1. “Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.”
2. “We enjoy the process far more than the proceeds.”
3. “You only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out.”
4. “Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.”
5. “A public-opinion poll is no substitute for thought.”

Funny Ones

1. “A girl in a convertible is worth five in the phonebook.”
2. “When they open that envelope, the first instruction is to take my pulse again.”
3. “We believe that according the name ‘investors’ to institutions that trade actively is like calling someone who repeatedly engages in one-night stands a ‘romantic.’”
4. “When a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact.”
5. “In the insurance business, there is no statute of limitation on stupidity.”

More good sources for Warren Buffet quotes:

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Usefull Business Quotes

If you can build a business up big enough, it's respectable.
Will Rogers

If you can count your money, you don't have a billion dollars.
J. Paul Getty

If you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work.
Kahlil Gibran

If you don't drive your business, you will be driven out of business.
B. C. Forbes

If you have to forecast, forecast often.
Edgar R. Fiedler

If you listen to your fears, you will die never knowing what a great person you might have been.
Robert H. Schuller

If you make a living, if you earn your own money, you're free - however free one can be on this planet.
Theodore White

If you owe the bank $100 that's your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that's the bank's problem.
J. Paul Getty

In modern business it is not the crook who is to be feared most, it is the honest man who doesn't know what he is doing.
William Wordsworth

In the business world, everyone is paid in two coins: cash and experience. Take the experience first; the cash will come later.
Harold S. Geneen

In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.
Benjamin Franklin

Informed decision-making comes from a long tradition of guessing and then blaming others for inadequate results.
Scott Adams

Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.
Steve Jobs

Inside every working anarchy, there's an Old Boy Network.
Mitchell Kapor

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.
Adam Smith

It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.
Mark Twain

It's called a pen. It's like a printer, hooked straight to my brain.
Dale Dauten

It's easy to make a buck. It's a lot tougher to make a difference.
Tom Brokaw

It's not what you pay a man, but what he costs you that counts.
Will Rogers

It's not your salary that makes you rich, it's your spending habits.
Charles A. Jaffe

Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do doesn't mean it's useless.
Thomas A. Edison

Like dogs in a wheel, birds in a cage, or squirrels in a chain, ambitious men still climb and climb, with great labor, and incessant anxiety, but never reach the top.
Robert Browning

Look at growth, look at how much time people spend on the Net and look at the variety of things that they are doing. It's all really good, so I am actually encouraged by the fundamentals that underlie usage growth on the Net.
Meg Whitman

Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.
Dale Carnegie

Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their work done.
Peter Drucker

My son is now an "entrepreneur." That's what you're called when you don't have a job.
Ted Turner

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
Abraham Lincoln

No enterprise is more likely to succeed than one concealed from the enemy until it is ripe for execution.
Niccolo Machiavelli

Not for nothing is their motto TGIF - 'Thank God It's Friday.' They live for the weekends, when they can go do what they really want to do.
Richard Nelson Bolles

Nothing interferes with my concentration. You could put on an orgy in my office and I wouldn't look up. Well, maybe once.
Isaac Asimov

Nothing so conclusively proves a man's ability to lead others as what he does from day to day to lead himself.
Thomas J. Watson

Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal.
Henry Ford

One of the tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency.
Arnold H. Glasow

One of the true tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency.
Arnold H. Glasow

One's mind has a way of making itself up in the background, and it suddenly becomes clear what one means to do.
A. C. Benson

Only a monopolist could study a business and ruin it by giving away products.
Scott McNealy

Our favorite holding period is forever.
Warren Buffett

Our work is the presentation of our capabilities.
Edward Gibbon

People will buy anything that is 'one to a customer.'
Sinclair Lewis

Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier.
Colin Powell

Profit in business comes from repeat customers, customers that boast about your project or service, and that bring friends with them.
W. Edwards Deming

Punctuality is one of the cardinal business virtues: always insist on it in your subordinates.
Don Marquis

Real riches are the riches possessed inside.
B. C. Forbes

Reason and judgment are the qualities of a leader.
Tacitus

Regard it as just as desirable to build a chicken house as to build a cathedral.
Frank Lloyd Wright

Remind people that profit is the difference between revenue and expense. This makes you look smart.
Scott Adams

So little done, so much to do.
Cecil Rhodes

Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.
Steve Jobs

Sooner or later, those who win are those who think they can.
Paul Tournier

Stock prices have been quoted in fractions for two centuries, based on a system descended from Spanish pieces of eight. Each dollar was cut into eight bits worth 12.5 cents each.
Charles A. Jaffe

Success or failure in business is caused more by the mental attitude even than by mental capacities.
Walter Scott

The best measure of a man's honesty isn't his income tax return. It's the zero adjust on his bathroom scale.
Arthur C. Clarke

The buck stops with the guy who signs the checks.
Rupert Murdoch

The fastest way to succeed is to look as if you're playing by somebody else's rules, while quietly playing by your own.
Michael Korda

The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and the will to carry on.
Walter Lippmann

The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant.
Max de Pree

The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.
Ambrose Bierce

The genius of a good leader is to leave behind him a situation which common sense, without the grace of genius, can deal with successfully.
Walter Lippmann

The great leaders are like the best conductors - they reach beyond the notes to reach the magic in the players.
Blaine Lee

The hardest thing to understand in the world is the income tax.
Albert Einstein

The herd instinct among forecasters makes sheep look like independent thinkers.
Edgar R. Fiedler

The incestuous relationship between government and big business thrives in the dark.
Jack Anderson

The invisible hand of the market always moves faster and better than the heavy hand of government.
Mitt Romney

The leader who exercises power with honor will work from the inside out, starting with himself.
Blaine Lee

The majority of men meet with failure because of their lack of persistence in creating new plans to take the place of those which fail.
Napoleon Hill

The man who will use his skill and constructive imagination to see how much he can give for a dollar, instead of how little he can give for a dollar, is bound to succeed.
Henry Ford

The meek shall inherit the Earth, but not its mineral rights.
J. Paul Getty

The most important quality in a leader is that of being acknowledged as such. All leaders whose fitness is questioned are clearly lacking in force.
Andre Maurois

The secret of business is to know something that nobody else knows.
Aristotle Onassis

The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell.
Confucius

The way to get things done is not to mind who gets the credit for doing them.
Benjamin Jowett

The wheel that squeaks the loudest is the one that gets the grease.
Josh Billings

The work an unknown good man has done is like a vein of water flowing hidden underground, secretly making the ground green.
Thomas Carlyle

The work of the individual still remains the spark that moves mankind ahead even more than teamwork.
Igor Sikorsky

There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.
Colin Powell

There are two kinds of companies, those that work to try to charge more and those that work to charge less. We will be the second.
Jeff Bezos

There is no time for cut-and-dried monotony. There is time for work. And time for love. That leaves no other time!
Coco Chanel

There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.
Sam Walton

There was a time when a fool and his money were soon parted, but now it happens to everybody.
Adlai E. Stevenson

Time is the scarcest resource and unless it is managed nothing else can be managed.
Peter Drucker

To command is to serve, nothing more and nothing less.
Andre Malraux

To think that the new economy is over is like somebody in London in 1830 saying the entire industrial revolution is over because some textile manufacturers in Manchester went broke.
Alvin Toffler

Try, try, try, and keep on trying is the rule that must be followed to become an expert in anything.
W. Clement Stone

We don't have a monopoly. We have market share. There's a difference.
Steve Ballmer

We succeed in enterprises which demand the positive qualities we possess, but we excel in those which can also make use of our defects.
Alexis de Tocqueville

Web users ultimately want to get at data quickly and easily. They don't care as much about attractive sites and pretty design.
Tim Berners-Lee

Whales only get harpooned when they come to the surface, and turtles can only move forward when they stick their neck out, but investors face risk no matter what they do.
Charles A. Jaffe

What we actually learn, from any given set of circumstances, determines whether we become increasingly powerless or more powerful.
Blaine Lee

What we've gone through in the last several years has caused some people to question 'Can we trust Microsoft?'
Steve Ballmer

What's the subject of life - to get rich? All of those fellows out there getting rich could be dancing around the real subject of life.
Paul A. Volcker

When in doubt, mumble; when in trouble, delegate; when in charge, ponder.
James H. Boren

Whenever an individual or a business decides that success has been attained, progress stops.
Thomas J. Watson

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
Mark Twain

Wise are those who learn that the bottom line doesn't always have to be their top priority.
William Arthur Ward

You are educated. Your certification is in your degree. You may think of it as the ticket to the good life. Let me ask you to think of an alternative. Think of it as your ticket to change the world.
Tom Brokaw

You can't operate a company by fear, because the way to eliminate fear is to avoid criticism. And the way to avoid criticism is to do nothing.
Steve Ross

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