Guy Spier

"“When you see a good move, look for a better one.” Applying this insight to stocks, I modified his mantra, often telling myself, “When you see a good investment, look for a better investment.”"

"It reminded me of an old joke that Warren likes to tell: “How do you beat Bobby Fisher?” Answer: “Play him at anything other than chess.”"

"No. I sat down at my desk and actively imagined that I was Buffett. I imagined what the first thing would be that he would do if he were in my shoes, sitting at my desk."

"Munger and his latticework of mental models."

"Ronald Reagan loved, “There’s no limit to what you can do if you don’t mind who gets the credit.”"

"If your goal in life is to get rich, value investing is pretty hard to beat. Sure, there are times when it falls out of favor, when even the greatest practitioners find themselves dismissed as fusty has-beens who have lost their touch. But it’s such a robust and fundamentally sound way to invest that it eventually regains its luster."

"Robbins describes this process as “modeling” our heroes."

"What I stumbled upon was this. Desperate to figure out how to lead a life that was more like his, I began constantly to ask myself one simple question: “What would Warren Buffett do if he were in my shoes?”"

"Clearly, he has set up his life so that it suits him and so that he enjoys it. When I asked if he had consciously created Berkshire’s unique decentralized structure, he emphasized that it operates that way because it suits his personality, not because it maximizes returns."

"Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill,"

"There’s a great lesson in this for me: if Warren can take the time to act like this with students (not to mention with investors like me), then I too need to act with real kindness toward the students I meet at business schools, and I should also respond encouragingly to every young graduate who sends me a résumé."

"According to Warren, temperament is more important than IQ when it comes to investing."

"Henry James that life is “all inclusion and confusion” while art is “all selection and discrimination.”"

"“Charlie and I always knew we would become very wealthy,” he told us, “but we weren’t in a hurry.” After all, he said, “If you’re even a slightly above average investor who spends less than you earn, over a lifetime you cannot help but get very wealthy—if you’re patient.”"

"he had permanent capital to invest since Berkshire is a company, not a fund."

"Buffett wasn’t aware that he was having this impact on me, but he set such a great example with his own fee structure that he made me want to treat my own shareholders more fairly. This was part of the power of the mere expectation of meeting him. There’s a joke on Wall"

"He charged no annual management fee, but took a quarter of the profits above a 6 percent hurdle. This is an extremely unusual structure, but it’s the best alignment I’ve ever seen between an investor and his shareholders. It truly embodies the principle of making money with them, not off them. Unless they do well, the fund manager earns nothing."

"My routine is to start with the least biased and most objective sources. These are typically the company’s public filings, including the annual report, 10K, 10Q, and proxy statement."

"I also wanted to copy Buffett by allowing investors to redeem their money only once a year. This helps the fund manager to invest for the long term, which benefits his shareholders. It also helps them psychologically because they think less often about how the fund is doing and whether to sell. After all, inaction and patience are almost always the wisest options for investors in the stock market."

"Checklist Item: Is this company providing a win-win for its entire ecosystem?"

"This became my own goal: not to be Warren Buffett, but to become a more authentic version of myself. As he had taught me, the path to true success is through authenticity."

"What impressed me most about him that day was not just his mental firepower, but the fact that he lived in a way that was totally congruent with his own nature. Nothing seemed to be misaligned. He had evidently spent his life trying to be true to himself."

"I know this sounds odd, but I felt that he was smiling on me whenever I behaved in a way that he might have behaved; and I felt as if he had turned away from me whenever I strayed from that path. This wasn’t a matter of idol worship. It was about choosing a teacher who had already discovered the truths that I still needed to learn."

"This guy has thought a lot about what he’s going to do with the money he makes over time. He’s going to turn it to the benefit of really, I think, thousands of people. . . . I admire him enormously.”"

"could get many—if not all—of the benefits of having him as a mentor by studying him relentlessly, and then imagining what he would have done in my shoes."

"“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.”"

"resolved. In 2007 this thought process led me to invest in Alaska Milk, the dominant producer of condensed milk in the Philippines. The"

"The Intelligent Investor: The Definitive Book on Value Investing by Benjamin Graham"

"The Rule: Check stock prices as infrequently as possible."

"Edward Whitmont’s The Symbolic Quest: Basic Concepts of Analytical Psychology"

"Tony Robbins. Awaken the Giant Within: How to Take Immediate Control of Your Mental, Emotional, Physical, and Financial Destiny!"

"“When you get to my age, you’ll really measure your success in life by how many of the people you want to have love you actually love you. I know people who have a lot of money, and they get testimonial dinners and they get hospital wings named after them. But the truth is that nobody in the world loves them. If you get to my age in life and nobody thinks well of you, I don’t care how big your bank account is, your life is a disaster. That’s the ultimate test of how you have lived your life.”"

"The Rule: Beware of CEOs and other top management, no matter how charismatic, persuasive, and amiable they seem."

"Blaise Pascal: “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”"

"“How on earth can I claim to understand the nuances of JPMorgan’s $2 trillion balance sheet?” The answer: I couldn’t. More important, neither could JPMorgan’s own management—at least, not with great accuracy. But I could make useful probabilistic inferences about the bank’s balance sheets and earning power. I asked myself, “Going forward, are these likely to be better or worse than other investors expect?”"

"if you want to get somewhere, anywhere, and you’re stuck, “Just Do It! Just make a move. Any move!” This might be obvious to many. Hell, it was obvious to me. But my bias toward analysis-paralysis meant that it was easier for me to pontificate in a library than to act. Robbins convinced me that I had to break the patterns of negative thought, push through my fears, and get moving."

"I’m always searching for the underlying truth, based on insufficient information. The game has helped me to recognize that it’s simply not possible to have a complete understanding of anything. We’re never truly going to get to the bottom of what’s going on inside a company, so we have to make probabilistic inferences."

"Walton’s book Made in America. These ideas about the sequencing of information may seem trite. But minor shifts in how we operate can have a major impact. By consistently improving the way I consume information, I’m looking to create better conditions for success over many years. Still, we’re all wired differently, so my idea of a healthy and balanced informational diet may be different from yours."

"one of my only advantages as an investor is the humble realization of just how flawed my brain really is."

"Forum: The Secret Advantage of Professional Leaders."

"Here was a man who, like Buffett, did his job with every ounce of his being."

"The Dhandho Investor: The Low-Risk Value Method to High Returns. As he puts it, “Heads, I win. Tails, I don’t lose much.”"

"The key is to free my mind from any unnecessary mental effort so I can use it for more constructive tasks that are likely to benefit me and my shareholders."

"“Hang out with people better than you, and you cannot help but improve.”"