PATIENCE

“How poor are they that have not patience!” William Shakespeare

"Genius is eternal patience." Michelangelo Di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni

“The world is full of foolish gamblers and they will not do as well as the patient investors.” Charlie Munger

“The stock market is designed to transfer money from the active to the patient.” Warren Buffett

"Patience can produce uncommon profits." Phil Carret

“Patience is essential.” Howard Marks

“Patience is a superpower.” Jake Rosser

"Any superiority an investment process may have will only emerge with time, so patience is important." Nick Sleep

"Men who can both be right and sit tight are uncommon." Jesse Livermore

"It is possible to make money— and a great deal of money—in the stock market. But it can't be done overnight or by haphazard buying and selling. The big profits go to the intelligent, careful and patient investor, not to the reckless and overeager speculator." J P Getty

"I think the record shows the advantage of a peculiar mind-set - not seeking action for its own sake, but instead combining extreme patience with extreme decisiveness." Charlie Munger

“This company looks cheap, that company looks cheap, but the overall economy could completely screw it up. The key is to wait. Sometimes the hardest thing to do is to do nothing.” David Tepper

“Buy good companies. Don’t overpay. Do nothing." Terry Smith

"We find doing nothing the most difficult task of all. (One English statesman attributed his country’s greatness in the 19th century to a policy of “masterly inactivity”. This is a strategy that is far easier for historians to commend than for participants to follow.)" Warren Buffett

“Most people are too fretful, they worry too much. Success means being very patient, but aggressive when it’s time.” Charlie Munger

"I consider patience to be the most important ingredient for success in the market." Francois Rochon

“People always want investments to go up like a line.…That’s just not reality. You make 80% of your money in 20% of the time in investing and you have to be patient.” Jeffery Gundlach

"[There] is the need for patience if big profits are to be made from investment. Put another way, it is often easier to tell what will happen to the price of a stock than how much time will elapse before it happens." Phil Fisher

“At the beginning of the AGM of the Berkshire Hathaway Company they show this little video and each year Buffett is asked what’s the main difference between himself and the average investor, and he answers patience. And there is so little of it these days. Has anyone heard of getting rich slowly.” Nick Sleep

“One of the best rules anybody can learn about investing is to do nothing, absolutely nothing, unless there is something to do.” James Rogers

“Patience, patience and more patience. Ben Graham said it, but it is true of all investment disciplines, not only value investing, although it is indispensable to that.” Peter Cundill

“Inaction and patience are almost always the wisest options for investors in the stock market.” Guy Spier

“The art of investment is the discipline of inaction in the absence of a good opportunity, but aggressive action when one is identified.” Li Lu

“Throughout all my years of investing I've found that the big money was never made in the buying or the selling. The big money was made in the waiting.” Jesse Livermore

“Financial markets suffer from a deep inability to price patience and compounding because of their dominant short-termism.” James Anderson

“There aren’t always great things to do, and sometimes we maximize our contribution by being discerning and relatively inactive. Patient opportunism – waiting for bargains – is often your best strategy.” Howard Marks

"Having deep conviction in what you own is the best bulwark against impatience upending investment returns." Jake Rosser

"I just wait until there is money lying in the corner, and all I have to do is go over there and pick it up." James Rogers

"You have to be willing to hang in when prevailing wisdom says you're wrong." John Neff

“You don’t have to be fully invested all the time. Have patience, keep your standards.” Irving Kahn

“We don’t get paid for activity, just for being right. As to how long we’ll wait, we’ll wait indefinitely.” Warren Buffett

“I like to be very patient and then when I see something, go a little bit crazy.” Stanley Druckenmiller

“In our style of doing things, patience is patience is patience.” Peter Cundill

“When there’s nothing particularly clever to do, the potential pitfall lies in insisting on being clever.” Howard Marks.

"Happiness ensues when it is not pursued - investing is the same thing. Success occurs when you are willing to wait for opportunities.” Mark Kingdon

“Investors need discipline to avoid the many unattractive pitches that are thrown, patience to wait for the right pitch, and judgement to know when it is time to swing.” Seth Klarman

"The big money is not in the buying and selling … but in the waiting.” Charlie Munger

“The stock market is like the weather in that if you don’t like the current conditions all you have to do is wait awhile.” Lou Simpson

“The single most important skill for being a good investor is to be very content with not doing anything for extended periods and that’s perfectly fine.” Mohnish Pabrai

“In chess, there is a term called zugzwang, which means that even though the ‘best’ move is to ‘not’ move, the game compels the player to do so, often putting him at a disadvantage. Investors are free to not move.’ Jim O’Shaughnessy

“Our success rests on having the discipline to wait patiently for opportunities to present themselves and then having the courage to run towards them when everyone else is running away.” Steve Leonard

"Some would say that this patience is part of our strategy, but I would say it's more part of our DNA. I like to say 'If there's nothing to do, do nothing.'" Jim Tisch

“We don’t have to swing at everything.” Mario Gabelli

“The trick in investing it just to sit there and watch pitch after pitch go by and wait for the one right in your sweet spot. And if people are yelling 'swing you bum', ignore them. There is a temptation for people to act far to frequently in stocks just because they are liquid.” Warren Buffett

"Be patient. Watched stock never boils." Peter Lynch

“You have to have patience in any business, and I think ours is no different.” Andreas Halvorsen

"Legendary investor Peter Lynch always emphasized the importance of being patient: 'Frequently, years of patience are rewarded in a single year.’" Francois Rochon

"Some great investment success once said, 'You make your money by the waiting.' Now that doesn’t mean sitting around for the next depression, you can’t do that, but a fair amount of patience is required in some of these good investment records. Patience followed by pretty aggressive conduct when the time comes." Charlie Munger

"Sitting still is the hardest thing to do. As Pascal wrote 'The hardest thing for a man to do is sit quietly in a room.'" Mark Kingdon

“Money managers running all types of strategies need good action plans for periods when the opportunity set is fallow. They must resist the allure of stretching parameters and rationalizing why merely good positions are okay to establish in the absence of very good or great positions.” Paul Singer

"The beauty in this business is that there are just hordes of future opportunities waiting and some of them may be huge if you're patient. And I think Ben Franklin summed it up well: 'He who has patience can have what he will.'" Frank Martin

"Have patience. Stocks don't go up immediately." Walter Schloss

“Traditionally the investor has been the man with patience and the courage of his convictions who would buy when the harried or disheartened speculator was selling.” Benjamin Graham

"Being patient is at the cornerstone of everything we do." John Rogers

"We do a lot of thinking and not a lot of acting. A lot of investors do a lot of acting, and not a lot of thinking." Lou Simpson

"Investors who aspire to long term success cannot afford the luxury of impatience [though they usually think the opposite is true]." Frank Martin

"Value investing requires deep reservoirs of patience and discipline." Seth Klarman

“In order to have a really good investment result, all you need is patience.” Sir John Templeton

"We have a culture of patience. Even though we work hard every day trying to uncover the next great investment, we only deploy our capital when we have real conviction that we have found one. When we don’t find interesting ideas, we do nothing and hold cash. For this reason, I’ve often joked that I’m 97% unproductive. While this means I better be damn productive the other 3% of the time, it also means exercising patience often and waiting for great opportunities." Brian Spector

"Patience, a long-term focus, and avoiding the fads are key for successful investing." Steve Romick

"My mantra has always been like that of Milwaukee Braves pitcher Lew Burdette, who once said 'I earn my living from the hungriness of the hitters.' I earn my living from the hungriness of investors, from their decisiveness, their forcefulness, from their great urge for immediacy.” Mark Spitznagel

"Phil Carret is about 96 and has been investing for over 70 years. He has done very well but he is patient. I'm not as patient as he is but I'd like to last as long." Walter Schloss

“Patience is one of the most important virtues for making any value investment.” Jim Tisch

"If you've done the numbers and are satisfied with them and the principle is right, you just have to grit your teeth and be patient.” Peter Cundill

"We think one of our advantages is the ability to be more patient than others, especially as investment time horizons appear to be getting shorter." David Einhorn

“People often complain that the stock market is a rigged game. And so it is. It's rigged against the impatient – and in favor of those who can let their winners run. The longer you can let them run, the more rigged a game you get to play.” Jason Zweig

"The key rules are don’t swing the bat unless it’s a slow pitch right down the middle of the plate, and don’t be bullied by the market into doing something irrational, whether buying or selling. This may sound obvious or clichéd to some, and perhaps confusingly ironic to others, but the ability to sit and do nothing may be the most rare and valuable investing skill of all. Inevitably, extreme price dislocations occur that create real opportunities for action, and only the patient and prepared investor can recognize such ideal situations and take full advantage." Chris Mittleman

“Patience is an incredibly important part of investing. The better we’re prepared, the easier it is for us to act when provoked by price, or to be quiet when we are not.” Yen Liow

"Patience, steady emotions, and common sense all are important when investing in common stocks." Ed Wachenheim

“In essence, healthy investor behaviour means being disciplined, patient and unemotional.” Chris Davis

"What you are trying to do is find specific investments that you think over time are going to work out when someone’s gotta sell. There is always a problem. All you gotta do is wait and take your time and there is always somebody who has made a mistake or a company is over-levered and really what we try to do is wait for those moments in time when we can invest." Marc Lasry

"In my free time, I listen to some old Wall-Street Week TV shows (I keep quite an extensive personal archive). In 1996, Louis Rukeyser interviewed the legendary Philip Carret and asked him what was the most important lesson of his 75 years of experience. Carret answered just one word: ‘Patience.’” Francois Rochon

"Our stay-put behaviour reflects our view that the stock market serves as a relocation centre at which money is moved from the active to the patient.” Warren Buffett

"I prefer the laissez-faire approach to investing that waits for simple ideas, and eschew chasing down complex opportunities that exert pressure to take action." Allan Mecham

"Patience is one of the most critical attributes for a long-term investor because you can be right and the market may tell you that you’re wrong, and it may tell you so for an extended period of time. It may reach the point where your sanity begins to be questioned by clients and even your colleagues. I’ve been in situations like that. There were many times where I’ve been involved in an investment, where it looks like it might not work out, and it ultimately did work out, and worked out wonderfully." Chris Mittleman

"Charlie Munger says: 'you don’t make money when you buy a stock, you don’t make money when you sell a stock, you make money by being patient and you make money by waiting.' Waiting for the right pitch, and then waiting for that pitch to kind of mature and develop. The single most important skill set that you can bring to value investing is patience. You have to have a temperament where you're very happy watching paint dry. I would say that is the most difficult thing for investors and you can trade lot of IQ points for patience. You don’t need a lot of IQ points but you need a lot of patience. That’s the piece that usually gets missed." Mohnish Pabrai

"Our aim is to keep portfolio management grounded in a mentality of long-term business ownership. We've tried to stack the odds, via our policies and procedures, to promote a business minded approach - not a fund manager approach - that allows the four most important investment principles to flourish: patience and discipline, and more patience and discipline. Our reasoning is simple; It's easy to do dumb things in investing." Allan Mecham

"We're like a basketball team playing without a shot-clock, patiently waiting for lay-ups and slam dunks, while the opposition operates within the confines of a 24-second shot-clock forced to take a raft of unbridled shots." Allan Mecham

"The biggest challenge for investors is patience and that is in short supply. You used to get a quarterly statement and often throw it in the garbage; now you can check your stock price 30 times a minute. There’s a lot more data, a lot more ability to crunch numbers and compare people. That works against investors, and patience continues to be the hardest challenge. It always was, but now it is even worse." Joel Greenblatt

"My only competitive advantage is patience and slightly superior analytics on the same information that everyone else receives. So far that’s worked out fine and we think it will work out in the future as well." Mohnish Pabrai

"Good investing is a matter of waiting to see the opening and then moving with strength. Lao Tsu wrote, 'He who knows how to be aggressive, and yet remains patient, becomes a receptacle for all of Nature's lessons.'" Bennett Goodspeed

"If we were private business owners/investors, long spans of inactivity would raise no eyebrows. No reasonable person would expect a farmer to sell his farm in order to buy a different farm every decade, let alone every year or several times a year. As public -market investors, however, this 'sitting on our hands' behaviour is unusual." Clifford Sosin

“Patience combined with opportunity is a great thing to have. My grandfather taught me that opportunity is infrequent and one has to be ready when it strikes. That’s what Berkshire is.” Charlie Munger

"We agree with Warren Buffet’s observation that the stock market is designed to transfer money from the active to the patient. By only swinging at fat pitches and avoiding curveballs thrown far outside the strike zone, we attempt to compound your capital at an above average rate while incurring a below average level risk. In investing, patience often means the accumulation of large cash balances as we wait to purchase 'compounding machines' at valuations that provide a margin of safety.” Chuck Akre

“Patience and a long-term perspective are required to give the power of compounding an opportunity to do its magic.” Chris Cerrone

“All the evidence suggests that the great investors are dull, patient and resolute. They accept that it’s just not possible to predict all those events and moods that the Financial Times sees as essential to investing.” James Anderson

“Patience; an attribute that forms the foundations of one of the most enduring edges in all of markets; an edge whose moat is only widening as time horizons continue to shorten and the speed of information continues to quicken. In fact, as I’ve said before, the advantage of patience is inversely correlated to the advantage of information; the weaker that info edge becomes, the stronger the edge that relies on time horizon becomes.” John Huber

“If we can elevate and educate our investors to understand the merits of an opportunity the reward is often ‘space and time,’” Christopher Begg

“We are patient investors. We hold great companies for an average of 7.5 years. Patience is doubly important because it can take a long time for companies to be successful. It can therefore take several years to be rewarded in share price terms.” Baillie Gifford

"The salient skill for an investor to master is being able to sit still, without tiring of sitting still, while recognising the constant tug of an overconfident psyche." Allan Mechum

"It's one thing to be patient and understanding, but that shouldn't come at the expense of intellectual honesty." William Martin

"Value investors take great pride in their patience, but for patience to be a good thing, your thesis has to be right. At some point you may have to recognize when new information presents enough of a challenge to your thesis that you should revisit whether or not this is an investment you would make today. That’s the process we go through when fundamentals are negatively deviating from our thesis." Bill Nygren

“Patience builds in you a great deal of character. Being patient in adversity is the ultimate test of the high quality investor. To be able to deal with peer group pressure and ridicule is a great and invaluable education.” Chetan Parikh