A Quote by Michael Burry

It is a tenet of my investment style that, on the subject of common stock investment, maximizing the upside means first and foremost minimizing the downside. The deleterious effect of permanent capital loss on portfolio returns cannot be overstated.

Michael Burry

Quote Topics

Cannot Capital Common Downside Effect First Foremost Investment Loss Maximizing Means Minimizing Permanent Portfolio Returns Stock Style Subject Upside

Quote Author

Michael Burry
American - Businessman
Born: June 19, 1971

In my view, the biggest investment risk is not the volatility of prices, but whether you will suffer a permanent loss of capital. Not only is the mere drop in stock prices not risk, but it is an opportunity. Where else do you look for cheap stocks?

Li Lu

Properly targeted public investment can do much to boost economic performance, generating aggregate demand quickly, fueling productivity growth by improving human capital, encouraging technological innovation, and spurring private-sector investment by increasing returns.

Michael Spence

Warren Buffett likes to say that the first rule of investing is "Don't lose money," and the second rule is, "Never forget the first rule." I too believe that avoiding loss should be the primary goal of every investor. This does not mean that investors should never incur the risk of any loss at all. Rather "don't lose money" means that over several years an investment portfolio should not be exposed to appreciable loss of principal.

Seth Klarman

Net return is simply the gross return of your investment portfolio less the costs you incur. Keep your investment expenses low, for the tyranny of compounding costs can devastate the miracle of compounding returns.

John C. Bogle

Targeting investment returns leads investors to focus on potential upside rather on downside risk ... rather than targeting a desired rate of return, even an eminently reasonable one, investors should target risk.

Seth Klarman

The risk of an investment is described by both the probability and the potential amount of loss. The risk of an investment-the probability of an adverse outcome-is partly inherent in its very nature. A dollar spent on biotechnology research is a riskier investment than a dollar used to purchase utility equipment. The former has both a greater probability of loss and a greater percentage of the investment at stake.

Seth Klarman

As an investor with small capital, one should prefer businesses that have high returns on capital and that require little incremental investment to grow.

Warren Buffett

Unlike return, however, risk is no more quantifiable at the end of an investment that it was at its beginning. Risk simply cannot be described by a single number. Intuitively we understand that risk varies from investment to investment: a government bond is not as risky as the stock of a high-technology company. But investments do not provide information about their risks the way food packages provide nutritional data.

Seth Klarman

An investment decision in the common stock of a company frequently involves a whole lot of factors interacting ... the one thing that causes the most trouble is when you combine a bunch of these together, you get this lollapalooza effect.

Charlie Munger

Just because a company's future is highly uncertain doesn't mean an investment in it is risky. In fact, some of the best potential investments are highly uncertain but have little risk of permanent capital loss.

Whitney Tilson

Rather, risk is a perception in each investor's mind that results from analysis of the probability and amount of potential loss from an investment. If an exploratory oil well proves to be a dry hole, it is called risky. If a bond defaults or a stock plunges in price, they are called risky. But if the well is a gusher, the bond matures on schedule, and the stock rallies strongly, can we say they weren't risky when the investment after it is concluded than was known when it was made.

Seth Klarman

What you pay for an investment is the single biggest determinant for how successful that investment will be. When equity prices are high, your returns will be lower. When they are cheap, your returns will be higher.

Barry Ritholtz

Below, we itemize some of the quite different lessons investors seem to have learned as of late 2009 - false lessons, we believe. To not only learn but also effectively implement investment lessons requires a disciplined, often contrary, and long-term-oriented investment approach. It requires a resolute focus on risk aversion rather than maximizing immediate returns, as well as an understanding of history, a sense of financial market cycles, and, at times, extraordinary patience.

Seth Klarman

As the prosperity of the nation and the height of wage rates depend on a continual increase in the capital invested in its plants, mines and farms, it is one of the foremost tasks of good government to remove all obstacles that hinder the accumulation and investment of new capital.

Ludwig von Mises

In the 1987 stock market crash, according to the conclusions of the official Brady report, colossal sales of stock index futures by so-called portfolio insurers - whose investment strategies depended entirely on these derivatives - greatly exacerbated the 500-point market decline.