CHANGE

‘Nothing endures but change.’ Heraclitus

‘When you’re finished changing, you’re finished.’ Benjamin Franklin

‘A man who does not change his mind has little mind to change.’ Dickson G Watts

‘The one unchangeable certainty is that nothing is unchangeable or certain.’ John Fitzgerald Kennedy

‘Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be.’ John Robert Wooden

‘It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.’ W. Edward Deming

“In business, the status quo means inevitable failure.” Thomas J Watson Jr

“Stubborn men don’t live long - financially.” Dickson G Watts

‘It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.’ Charles Darwin

“As Lao Tsu said, ‘To resist change is like holding your breath - if you persist, you will die.’ Therefore, Lao Tsu’s advice that ‘man must accept motion, must live with motion, and must know himself to be forever moving’ is even more relevant today than when first uttered.” Bennett Goodspeed

“Faced with the choice between changing one’s mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.” John K Galbraith

"One has to be a student of change. Everything changes. I just don't believe you can have confidence in any industry for an infinite length of time.” Roy Neuberger

“The premise of our operational philosophy was always and still is: The World Changes. Nothing is Permanent. Those who fail to adapt to change risk everything.” Bruce Kovner

“I often tell students that the only thing that doesn’t change is change itself. We embrace what may come with an open mind and open arms. We observe the whole from afar, and we always consider the implications of the future.” Lei Zhang

"Facts change, we change." Bruce Berkowitz

“Facts change, you change the portfolio.” Hugh Hendry

"A wise man changes his mind: a fool never." William D Gann

"When I give advice about investing, I always emphasize the need to recognize change." Jim Rogers

“Embrace change. Although older people are generally threatened by change, young people loved me because I embraced change rather than running from it. Change creates opportunity.” T. Boone Pickens

"Warren and I are very good at changing our prior conclusions. We work at developing that facility because, without it, disaster often comes." Charlie Munger

“You have to kind of listen to the market and be willing to have you stories challenged and be willing to change them. There’s a distinction between sticking to your beliefs that you know to be true and sticking to an opinion or theory you have that may or may not be true.” Dan Loeb

"Investors have to be alert to changes in the market that could change their original assumptions." Leon Levy

"You have to have the habit of re-examining your old ideas all the time. Because if you don't they'll become so firm you can't see it when they become wrong. You have to have the habit, like house cleaning, you just can't let the dust pile up. So you got to clean out your idea cabinet all the time and throw out the bad ideas and put in better ones. You just can't get through life successfully without it. The world changes. Business is not like physics - in physics the same thing is going to happen now that happened 30 years ago. The exact same prescription [in business] that worked in 1935 won't mean a damn in 2012 or something. It's a different system. Everything is different. So if you don't learn you are going to be stuck in yesteryear and clobbered by fate." Charlie Munger

"A continuous challenge facing every one of us is the natural tendency to self-impose constraints on the idea generation process. Facts and circumstances change constantly, and if we are not prepared to challenge the status quo, we will eventually stumble. A path not followed in the past, and rightly so, may very well be the optimal path today." Andreas Halvorsen

“Be prepared and willing to change your mind if your initial decision was flawed or if circumstances change. Be readily willing to admit that you made a mistake.” Ed Wachenheim

“One attribute I have had all my life is the ability to change my mind if I receive new information, and withstand the criticism from others that invariably follows when I do so. The pain is almost always worth it and fades more quickly than people generally expect. Memories are very short. In my experience it's far better not to do something, to walk away and risk people's opprobrium than to do something that you will regret.” Guy Hands 

"Conviction. Conviction. Conviction. New facts. Change." Marc Andreessen

"Change, the investors only certainty." T. Rowe Price

“Investing is all about changes, not about static.” Rajiv Jain

"The only thing you can count on is change. Even if the fundamental environment were to remain unchanged - which it won't - risk/return prospects would change because (a) investors will move the prices of assets, certainly in relative terms, and (b) investor psychology will change. That is why no strategy, tactic or opinion will work forever." Howard Marks

"Markets change radically, every five years that I've seen. Markets aren't nearly as good at discounting the future as people think." John Burbank

"A significant number of companies disappeared almost overnight over the last decade (the corporate cemetery is full of companies formerly believed to be indestructible). Nevertheless, others were born or reborn and became titans of industry within a few years (Google, Apple, Amazon, Intuitive Surgical, PetroChina, Tata Group, etc.) If there is one constant in the business world, it is change!" Francois Rochon

"Obviously all business change to some extent." Warren Buffett

"One cannot make an investment and take for granted that its worth will remain unchanged. New sources of supply coming from hitherto untapped areas of the world may transform the competitive position of a company, as will changes in people's habits or technological innovations. Often something will shrink in value because of one discovery, as coal did in relation to oil and electricity, only to be given new economic life by another development such as the new chemical uses being made of coal. Actually one can point to only a few things whose value has resisted the change of time down through the centuries - and even then not without fluctuations. Among these I would list some minerals like gold, silver, and copper, precious stones, works of art; and crop bearing lands. Even with these things one must add the qualification ‘at least so far.’” Bernard Baruch 1957

"Fortunes change; there's no assurance that major companies won't become minor, and there's no such thing as a can't miss blue-chip." Peter Lynch

"Most businesses are subject to change if you stay with them long enough. There's not a single business that I know of that will never change." Li Lu

“Businesses are in a constant state of change. Changes in technology, distribution, or regulation might whittle away at a business’s competitive advantage. Even the most successful companies must reinvent themselves periodically to remain relevant and adapt as the world evolves around them. The moat must be dredged every now and then. Failure to do so may cause competitive advantage to weaken or disappear altogether.” Chris Cerrone

"In studying the investments we have made in both subsidiary companies and common stocks, you will see that we favor businesses and industries unlikely to experience major change. The reason for that is simple: Making either type of purchase, we are searching for operations that we believe are virtually certain to possess enormous competitive strength ten or twenty years from now. A fast changing industry environment may offer the chance for huge wins, but it precludes the certainty we seek." Warren Buffett

“Those who will not face improvements because they are changes, will face changes that are not improvements.” Charlie Munger

"Those who cannot adjust to change will be swept aside by it. Those who recognise change and react accordingly will benefit." Jim Rogers

“The nature of investing is that to be successful you need to constantly adapt. Markets and market participants are continuously evolving.” Paul Marshall

"I'm intrigued by change and events surrounding it. Change leads to new experiences and opportunity." Sam Zell

“Our takeaway, then, is that it’s essential to remain adaptable. That when conditions change, that when moods change, that when earnings change, it’s not good enough to rely on one’s initial decision. Because what’s obvious isn’t always correct, and what’s correct isn’t always obvious. Investing is riddled with such dogmatic rules, particularly when it comes to active management or valuation multiples (just to name two).” Rajiv Jain

"Probably one of my greatest assets over the last 30 years is that I’m open-minded and I can change my mind very quickly." Stanley Druckenmiller

"Really good traders are also capable of changing their minds in an instant. They can be dogmatic in their opinion and then immediately change it." Steve Clark

“The ability to course-correct is one of the most underrated skills in investing. Too often ego gets in the way of admitting your wrong. We like the way investment manager Ray Dalio frames it, ‘pain plus reflection equals progress.’” Jake Rosser

"The key is to constantly adapt and find the strategy that works." Bruce Kovner

“You have to know who you are in this business but you go to leave enough flexibility to evolve.” Dennis Lynch

“Every investment decision has to be predicated somehow on buying things at a discount. But you have to adapt and evolve because exactly the same mousetrap isn’t going to work forever.” Rajiv Jain

“I think the best businesses say they have to continue to learn and iterate even when you're running, you know, several billion or 10 billion or 20 billion dollars, you know, how investors die and how investment firms die is that they don't iterate with the times. They are stuck in a set way of investing in their own process because that's what their own LPs are underwriting. And they're scared to change that process over time as the market evolves. I think that's something that most people kind of need to understand because, I mean, heck, look at Amazon and their day one mentality. They're continually iterating, evolving their business model. I think investment firms need to do the same.” Fred Liu

“Never get complacent. Nothing is forever. Whether it is an individual or a business your competition will defeat you if you are not constantly seeking ways to reinvent and improve yourself.” Stephen Schwarzman

“Unless you adapt, you keep your basic principles, but you have to adapt your tactics, your structures - all of that over time or else you will not survive.” Steve Mandel

"Traders who are successful over the long run adapt. If they do use rules, and you meet them 10 years later, they will have broken those rules. Why? Because the world has changed." Colm O'Shea

“When the rules of the game change, the process with which you make decisions, the process with which you act, the value of information, the value of inputs, must change with it.” Tony Deden

“In Wall Street, the man who does not change his mind will soon have no change to mind.” W.D Gann

"If you know that the stock doesn't know you own it, you are ahead of the game. You are ahead because you can change your mind and your actions without regard to what you did or thought yesterday." Adam Smith, The Money Game

“My perculiarity is that I don’t have a particular style of investing, or, more exactly, I try to change my style to fit conditions.” Geroge Soros

“There is a place and time for every style.” Larry Robbins

"It's not enough to have great investing insights, you have to evolve." Ralph Wanger

“Evolve or die. This evolutionary cycle is not just for people but for countries, companies, economies—for everything. And it is naturally self-correcting as a whole, though not necessarily for its parts.” Ray Dalio

“When you're betting the ranch and the circumstances change, you have to change, and that's how I've always managed money.” Stanley Druckenmiller

"In the stock market, in investing, there is nothing permanent except change. The investment manager should try to cultivate a mix of healthy scepticism, open-mindedness, and willingness to listen. It is not easy." Barton Biggs

“One of the things I most want to emphasize is how essential it is that one's investment approach be intuitive and adaptive rather than fixed and mechanistic." Howard Marks

“Never adopt permanently any type of asset or any selection method. Try to stay flexible, open-minded, and sceptical. Long term top results are achieved only by changing from popular to unpopular the type of securities you favour and your methods of selection.” Sir John Templeton

“Above all, we were flexible, opportunistic, and unconstrained in where we would and could invest.” Michael Steinhardt

"This is an opportunistic business. You need to be very flexible." Mohnish Pabrai

"To achieve balance one must be flexible. I know an investor who bought his first bond after 50 years of doing very well without bonds. He was flexible enough to realise that after half a century, the time had come."Roy Neuberger

“Sir John Templeton said something to me and it stuck in my mind and I didn’t do anything about it at the time. We were on a roll of fifteen years of wonderful results, no down years, a high compound rate of return and some money coming in. He said something which I think is correct, and that Graham also talks about; ‘always change a winning game’. I didn’t do it because I was on a roll then and I wasn’t flexible enough.” Peter Cundill

“Stability is a close cousin of stagnation, and discipline is a close cousin of rigidity. So how they adapted to changing environments? Look at Buffett. I mean, he’s adapted dramatically. He was a classic low multiple cigar butt kind of investor and then moved to a different area in terms of quality.” Rajiv Jain

“Expect and react to change. No bull market is permanent. No bear market is permanent. And there are no stocks that you can buy and forget. The pace of change is too great. Being relaxed, as Hooper advised, doesn’t mean being complacent.” Sir John Templeton

"If the world were constant, without change, analytical skills would be all that was necessary for successful investing. Economic models would work perfectly, as correlations would be static and thus predictable. Unfortunately, a'la Allen Toffler's Future Shock, not only is there change in the world, but its pace is accelerating." Bennett Goodspeed 1978

“The biggest risk we worry about is not adapting to the times and participating in change. That’s what keeps us on our toes.” Chris Davis

“The world is always changing and you have to evolve with it. If you don't evolve you'll probably stay behind, very slowly but surely. You have to accept that you have to always rethink everything and do postmortems on investments on what went well and what went wrong.” Francois Rochon

"The ability to learn new ways to look at value allows you to make some profitable investments that you may well have overlooked had you not adapted to the times." Chris Browne

“The screwiest thing you can do is to think you're a master of the universe. We're all just little cogs, and the universe will go on without us. We have to fit into it and adapt to it. Change is inevitable. The only constant is impermanence. We have to accommodate to the fact that the wheel turns and the environment changes. It's very helpful to view the world as behaving cyclically and oscillating rather than going in a straight line. Everything is cyclical.” Howard Marks

"To be successful in the markets, you have to be willing to change your opinion. Most people are not willing to change their opinion. You have to be humble about your ideas." Joe Vidich

"While investors and managers must place their feet in the future, their memories and nervous systems often remain plugged into the past. When change is slow, constant rethinking is actually undesirable; it achieves little and slows response time. But when change is great, yesterday's assumptions can be retained only at great cost.” Warren Buffett

"I'm looking for businesses that I think are unlikely to experience a lot of change in the future." Allan Mecham

"There are no easy answers about what personal qualities make for survival and longevity, but a successful manager is one who has found a balance between discipline and flexibility, between the courage of his convictions and the need to desert the battlefield in order to live to fight another day." Paul Singer

"Remember the world is always changing. Be aware of change. Buy change. You should be willing to buy or sell anything. So many people say, "I could never buy that kind of stock," "I could never buy utilities,", "I could never play commodities." You should be flexible and alert to investing in anything." Jim Rogers

“The greatest opportunities always occur around change.” Paul Marshall

“Nothing is constant, that’s the interesting thing about business, that’s why you have to keep re-learning. The analysis or conclusion could be different in a couple of years. All sorts of things will cause change. And that’s a good thing. That’s why people with active minds, actively prepared and have the psychological temperament to be able act when they see insight and opportunity will always have a chance to be fabulously rich.” Li Li

"I think about how the world is changing and then I look to understand companies, or companies that are changing in ways I didn't expect make me then go up and try and understand what are the broader things going on, so I can see a pattern emerge, and try and take advantage of that." John Burbank

“The world has changed in ways that were unimaginable 30-50 years ago. I think they will change from today forward in ways that are unimaginable. The key is to be attentive to those changes.” David Abrams

“Whatever the outcome, we will heed a prime rule of investing; you don’t have to make it back the way you lost it.” Warren Buffett

“It is easy for a discretionary trader to become obsessed with a particular market that has delivered a few straight losing trades, thinking that the market owes him something. This is a bad mental state to enter. Being compelled to recoup losses from a particular market in the same market is a dangerous practice.” Peter Brandt

"If you make a big bet, be open-minded, if the situation changes, you must change." Stanley Druckenmiller

"My views change as economic, political, and technological changes occur on our planet and sometimes out in space. It is imputative that you be willing to change your thoughts to meet new conditions." Roy Neuberger

"We strive to be intellectually honest at all times, maintaining a willingness to change our mind when we are wrong." Seth Klarman

"As Darwin described, adaption ie adjusting appropriately to changes in one's circumstances - is a big part of the evolutionary process, and it is rewarded." Ray Dalio

"Everything is in a constant state of change, and the wise investor recognises that success is a process of continually seeking answers to new questions." Sir John Templeton

"The world changes. It keeps spinning, and things don't stay the same, so you always need to be working and learning and studying to make sure that your circles of competence are relevant." Thomas Gayner

"We always welcome the challenge [of well-developed counter-views] and remain committed to changing our view in the face of a more compelling argument." Jim Mooney

"The investment world has clearly changed and you have to change with it or you become a dinosaur." Ed Wachenheim

"The lesson for me is that things change. Seldom do businesses stay great for decades. So we have to always keep an opened mind and not lose track of the fundamentals of a company we own shares in." Francois Rochon

"Sooner or later every popular fast growing industry becomes a slow growing industry, and numerous analysts and prognosticators are fooled. There's always a tendency to think things will never change, but inevitably they do." Peter Lynch

"I believe in maximum flexibility, so I reserve the right to change my position on any subject when the external environment relating to any topic changes too." Henry Singleton

“Good investing strategies are like the flu vaccine. Effective ones exist, but only for a limited period of time because the underlying disease evolves and becomes resistant to what used to work. The flu vaccine changes every year based on what types of flu strains are likely to prevail. Investment strategies should do the same.” Morgan Housel

"Embracing change as a constant is not consensus wisdom... it is the stark reality of humanity. Human nature does a better job of taking experience and observations, and extrapolating them to infinity: great will remain great, good will remain good, and poor will remain poor. We attempt to counter human nature by embracing change as its own checkpoint in our investment process." Christopher Begg

"Many stocks bought at a time when they were deemed good investments have later met with drastically changed conditions. Hence such so-called "investment stocks'' frequently become purely speculative. Some go out of existence altogether. The original "investment" evaporates into thin air along with the capital of the investor. This occurrence is due to the failure to realize that so-called "investments" may be called upon in the future to face a new set of conditions which would jeopardize the earning capacity of the stock, originally bought for a permanent investment. Before the investor learns of this changed situation, the value of his investment is already greatly depreciated. Therefore the investor must guard his capital account just as the successful speculator does in his speculative ventures. If this were done, those who like to call themselves "investors" would not be forced to become unwilling speculators of the future - nor would trust fund accounts depreciate so much in their value." Jesse Livermore

"I should emphasise that, as citizens, Charlie and I welcome change; Fresh ideas, new products, innovative processes and the like cause our country's standard of living to rise, and that's clearly good. As investors, however, our reaction to a fermenting industry is much like our attitude toward space exploration: We applaud the endeavour but prefer to skip the ride." Warren Buffett

"Of the fifty most important stocks on the NYSE in 1911, today only one, General Electric, remains in business.. That's how powerful the forces of competitive destruction are. Over the very long term, history shows that the chances of any business surviving in a manner agreeable to a company's owners are slim at best." Charlie Munger

“We see change as the enemy of investments .. so we look for the absence of change. We don’t like to lose money. Capitalism is pretty brutal. We look for mundane products that everyone needs.” Charlie Munger

"Investors also have to watch out for companies that can't adapt to change, and in today's business world changes come at a dizzyingly rapid rate. If you don't believe it, look back at the favourite growth stocks of yesteryear. You'll find some real giggles on the list and more than a few head scratchers. In the 1960's Polaroid, Burroughs, and Xerox were considered invincible. Later, Schlumberger and IBM took on the mantle, and for a good many years Sears was a master of the universe." Ralph Wanger

"Severe change and exceptional returns usually don't mix. Most investors, of course, behave as if just the opposite were true. That is, they usually confer the highest price-earnings ratios on exotic-sounding businesses that hold out the promise of feverish change. That prospect lets investors fantasize about future profitability rather than face today's business realities. For such investor-dreamers, any blind date is preferable to one with the girl next door, no matter how desirable she may be.

Experience, however, indicates that the best business returns are usually achieved by companies that are doing something quite similar today to what they were doing five or ten years ago. That is no argument for managerial complacency. Businesses always have opportunities to improve service, product lines, manufacturing techniques, and the like, and obviously these opportunities should be seized. But a business that constantly encounters major change also encounters many chances for major error. Furthermore, economic terrain that is forever shifting violently is ground on which it is difficult to build a fortress-like business franchise. Such a franchise is usually the key to sustained high returns." Warren Buffett

“If somebody tells us the business is going to change a lot, in Wall Street, they love to tell you that, you know, that’s great opportunity. They don’t think it’s a great opportunity when Wall Street itself is going to change a lot, incidentally. But they — you know, it’s a great opportunity. We don’t think it’s an opportunity at all. I mean, it scares the hell out of us. Because we don’t know how things are going to change.” Warren Buffett

“What we most need is to be as good as we can be in understanding change. We need to learn how it happens, what it requires, when it happens and when it doesn’t happen. Only after this can we start to think about the specific instances and the returns to success as the world changes. Some of this is to do with enlarging the number and power of the mental models we can use for assessing the possibilities of change, some of it comes from historical analogies.” James Anderson

“As humans we need to adapt to a constantly changing world and be willing to embrace different viewpoints. Any organisation that wants to thrive over long periods must do the same.” Tom Coutts

“The company that doesn’t pioneer, doesn’t take chances, and merely goes along with the crowd is liable to prove a rather mediocre investment in this highly competitive world.” Phil Fisher