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Su market timing, investimenti azionari, business di qualità, etc...

“So much in the investment world has become focused on tamping down volatility that it’s gotten somewhat away from an emphasis on returns. We see that as an opportunity. If you’re willing to look further out and accept the inherent randomness of what can go on in the interim, we can sit with an undervalued portfolio of unleveraged, diversified businesses with business models that aren’t going to become obsolete and feel quite comfortable about its prospects.” (Tweedy Browne) 

“There are always three games going on in the market at any time: a game of chance, a game of skill and a game of strategy. Games of chance are gambling; games of skill are speculating; and games of strategy are investing. The best way to understand this is to look at the definitions. Investors, like Warren Buffett, want to find the underlying value of a company. The time horizon is the same time horizon it takes to work out the company’s strategic plan, usually years and decades. The speculator doesn’t care about the underlying value of the company. He cares about the underlying demand of buyers and sellers in the stock. He is looking at the beauty-contest aspect: will people like the stock and bid it up or not? And the gambler is just a more speculative speculator, making a bet because he’s got a hunch that he knows what’s going on.” (Alfred R. Berkeley, presidente NASDAQ) 

“More fortunes are made by sitting on good securities for years at a time than by active trading.” (Philip Carret – fondatore di Pioneer Funds) 

“Much success can be attributed to inactivity. Most investors cannot resist the temptation to constantly buy and sell.” (Warren Buffett)

“There are two types of forecasters: those who don’t know, and those who don’t know they don’t know.” (JK Galbraith) 

“Investors come up with all kinds of reasons to own or not own stocks, and in times of stress the reasons can become nonsensical because people get driven by this cascade of negative information. We see analyst reports all the time that say they don’t like a stock short-term or they don’t see a catalyst in the next six months, but that it’s attractive long-term. Implicit in that is the notion that: 'I’m going to know exactly the right time to step in and I’ll let you know a few days before it’s obvious to the rest of the market.' Based on our experience and everything we’ve seen about people’s ability to time the market, we don’t understand how to make money on that basis.” (Tweedy Browne) 

“We have no problem buying things that take a long time to play out. Call me lazy, but I don’t want to worry about last week’s same-store sales or next week’s oil price.” (Jeffrey Schwarz, Loomis Sayles) 

“It’s not about beating the market every time, it’s about beating the market over time. With individual stocks, 10% of the time they’re cheap enough to buy, 10% of the time they’re expensive enough to sell, and the rest of the time you should just hold them if you own them and avoid them if you don’t. Wait until the opportunity is there, buy only when you have confidence in long-term value of the business, and then be comfortable enough to make a big investment. If those criteria aren’t met, it’s better to hold cash and keep waiting.” (Steve Leonard, Pacifica Capital) 

“We've really made the money out of high quality businesses. In some cases, we bought the whole business. And in some cases, we just bought a big block of stock. But when you analyze what happened, the big money's been made in the high quality businesses. And most of the other people who've made a lot of money have done so in high quality businesses. Over the long term, it's hard for a stock to earn a much better return than the business which underlies it earns. If the business earns 6% on capital over 40 years and you hold it for that 40 years, you're not going to make much different than a 6% return, even if you originally buy it at a huge discount. Conversely, if a business earns 18% on capital over 20 or 30 years, even if you pay an expensive looking price, you'll end up with a fine result. So the trick is getting into better businesses. And that involves all of these advantages of scale that you could consider momentum effects.” (Charlie Munger)