A Quote by Warren Buffett
I put heavy weight on certainty. It's not risky to buy securities at a fraction of what they're worth.
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Securities based on risky mortgages are what toppled financial institutions but it was the government that made the mortgages risky in the first place, by making home-ownership statistics the holy grail, for which everything else was to be sacrificed, including commonsense standards for making home loans.
I used to be a very, very heavy weight lifter. I weighed about 210, 215. And I used to put a lot of weight on my back. I squatted over 500 pounds.
I say that I'm genetically gifted. In a weight-governed sport, I don't put weight on because of my Polish 'heritage, it's genetic. Even when I am not in training, I don't put on weight. When I start training, I don't need to take a lot of weight off.
We say we are trying to buy into businesses with excellent economics, run by honest and able people at a decent price. We buy very few securities, so we look at it as "focused" investing.
But what's worth more than gold?" "Practically everything. You, for example. Gold is heavy. Your weight in gold is not very much gold at all. Aren't you worth more than that?
We don't understand the equity market well, and so we deploy funds in fixed-income securities, and like any other securities, investment in those securities also need to follow the mark-to-market accounting principle.
It's a heavy weight, the camera. Now we have modern and lightweight, small plastic cameras, but in the '70s they were heavy metal.
In our worship of certainty we must distinguish between the sound certainty and the sham, between what is gold and what is tinsel; and then, when certainty is attained, we must remember that it is not the only good; that we can buy it at too high a price; that there is danger in perpetual quiescence as well as in perpetual motion; and that a compromise must be found in a principle of growth.
I personally make sure that some of my investments are in foreign securities or in international commodity portfolios that are independent of the US dollar. But that's a personal preference. I do not invest in currencies because it's so complicated and so risky. I would not attempt that without excellent professional help.
I have a way to photograph. You work with space, you have a camera, you have a frame, and then a fraction of a second. It's very instinctive. What you do is a fraction of a second, it's there and it's not there. But in this fraction of a second comes your past, comes your future, comes your relation with people, comes your ideology, comes your hate, comes your love - all together in this fraction of a second, it materializes there.
I once read about a meeting of economists who agreed that if their forecasts were 33 1/3 % correct, that was considered a high mark in their profession. Well, of course, I know you cannot invest in securities successfully with odds like that against you if you place dependence solely upon judgement as to the right securities to own and the right time or price to buy them. Then, too, I read somewhere about the man who described an economist as resembling ‘a professor of anatomy who was still a virgin.’
One way to ease liquidity for banks is that the government can buy all highly rated securities held by the banks. Every single bank in the U.A.E. has some sovereign debts in their portfolios. I am not asking them to buy any junk bonds, rather the high quality U.A.E. government debt.
Zegna has the perfect weight fabric. There are a lot of designers who make clothes that are a little too heavy. They feel heavy. They almost feel like a coat.
However, if one has been playing the buy-and-hold game with quality securities, one has been exposed to a substantial amount of market risk because the valuations placed on these securities have implied overly rosy scenarios prone to popular revision in times of more realistic expectation. This is one of those times, but it is my feeling that the revisions have not been severe enough, the expectations not yet realistic enough. Hence, the world's best companies largely remain overpriced in the marketplace.
I remember when I was retiring I said to my kids 'I promise you I'll never put on weight' because people always think footballers retire and eat and drink and put on loads of weight.
People have a need for certainty - and that need for certainty is in every human being, certainty that you can avoid pain, certainty that you can at least be comfortable. It's a survival instinct.
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