Mohnish Pabrai Quotes
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Mistakes are the best teachers. One does not learn from success. It is desirable to learn vicariously from other people's failures, but it gets much more firmly seared in when they are your own.
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To the extent societal rules or the wiring of your brains make it easy to acquire a lot of assets, then to the extent you can, you should try to improve the world.
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Industries with rapid change are the enemy of the investor. Tech businesses, particularly biotech, is a problem from that point of view. All industries work with change, but you should ideally be investing in businesses with a low rate of change, not a high rate of change.
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Before starting my own investment funds, the only models I was aware of were those of Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger. Their models made a lot of sense to me, so I cloned them.
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We Americans love original ideas. But truly, there are already plenty of good ones out there, ours for the taking. If I were too proud to copy the ideas of others, I likely wouldn't have even a fraction of my current success.
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The only way one should buy stocks is if you understand the underlying business. You stay within the circle of competence. You buy businesses you understand.
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The problem most nonprofits have is that they are run by romantics who are great to hang out with, but they have no clue.
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I think a lot of people are getting more serious about how to do the most good, but there is no road map. I'm hoping I can offer an example.
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One of the first things I tell people is, if you want to learn about investing, you want to open an account and make real investments because that's when it becomes real.
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You know, my degrees are in computer engineering. I spent a lot of time in the tech industry. And I like to say that I don't invest in tech because I spent time in it. And I saw firsthand that the durability of technology moats is many times an oxymoron.
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Entrepreneurs are great at dealing with uncertainty and also very good at minimizing risk. That's the classic great entrepreneur.
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It is the performance of the business that matters. It is hard enough to figure out the future of the business. Do not try to figure out the future of the country or the world; focus on the business.
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I have a hard time getting past the day without the nap, so the nap is a must.
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You don't make money when you buy stocks. And you don't make money when you sell stocks. You make money by waiting.
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Basically if you study entrepreneurs, there is a misnomer: People think that entrepreneurs take risk, and they get rewarded because they take risk. In reality entrepreneurs do everything they can to minimize risk. They are not interested in taking risk. They want free lunches and they go after free lunches.
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The single biggest advantage a value investor has is not IQ. It's patience and waiting. Waiting for the right pitch, and waiting for many years for the right pitch.
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Talking to people is beneficial if you can identify the right people to share ideas and discuss decisions because everyone has blind spots, and others can sometimes catch yours. I think an investment team is a bad idea, but it is a good idea to talk to trustworthy individuals who do not have biases or interests.
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The good news in investing is there are no HR problems. If there are no humans, there are no problems!
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There is no such thing as a value trap. There are investing mistakes.
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I used to not talk much to anyone about my investments.