Bill Ackman Quotes
Best 37 Quotes by Bill Ackman – Page 1 of 2
“As a result of overdiversification, their (active managers) returns get watered down. Diversification covers up ignorance. Active managers haven't done enough research into any of their companies. If managers have 200 positions, do you think they know what's going on at any one of those companies at this moment?”
“Everyone told me it was a really stupid idea to start my own hedge fund right out of business school. That’s how I knew that it was a good idea.”
“Experience is making mistakes and learning from them.”
“From day one, I was always unafraid to ask someone to invest because, I thought that, while capital was a commodity, good investment ideas were rare assets.”
“Herbalife the customers are fictitious, the business opportunity is a scam, the university degree is a fraud.”
“I am always prepared to do the right thing regardless of what other people think.”
“I have more money than I need. I don’t need to work for a living. I do this because I love what I do.”
“I love what I do. I don’t do it for the money. I work on behalf of investors that I like and want to do well for. I’m a competitive person.”
“I think a very good system in a world with a lot of passive investors is one in which there are at least a few entrepreneurial investors, prepared to say what they think, prepared to propose a change in management, change in strategy, change in cost structure, capital structure.”
“I think good private equity investors create a lot more economic value than they destroy.”
“I think most investors overdiversify because they’re lazy. They haven’t done enough research into any of their companies. If they’ve got 200 positions, do you think they know what’s going on at any one of those companies at this moment?”
“I want to have one of the great investment records of all time, why not?”
“I was a little bit of a cocky kid.”
“I'm an extremely, extremely persistent person. Extremely. And when I believe I am right, and it is important, I will go to the end of the earth.”
“I'm not emotional about investments. Investing is something where you have to be purely rational and not let emotion affect your decision making – just the facts.”
“I’m a very straightforward person. I say precisely what I think. Sometimes it rubs people the wrong way.”
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“I would say that 85 percent of my net worth is invested in my own funds, primarily because I believe that is the safest place in the world for it.”
“I’m not emotional about investments. Investing is something where you have to be purely rational and not let emotion affect your decision making – just the facts.”
“I’ve seen very few people in the world accomplish anything unless they were optimists.”
“If I believe that I am right, I will take it to the end of the earth until I am proven right.”
“If you look at the great frauds of all time, Enron had that phantom trading floor. What Herbalife has is it has phantom or fictitious customers.”
“In order to be successful, you have to make sure that being rejected doesn’t bother you at all.”
“In the investing business you need a – a high degree of confidence but you also need a high degree of humbleness and you have to balance those two… Humbleness comes from mistakes.”
“Investing is a business where you can look very silly for a long period of time before you are proven right.”
“Investing is one of the few things you can learn on your own.”
“It is a certainty that Herbalife is a pyramid scheme. We believe it's harming a population of low-income, principally Hispanic people in the U.S. to benefit a handful of super wealthy people at the top of the pyramid.”
“Let me win? That doesn’t exist in my house. No one lets anyone win. Fight to the death.”
“Preserving the 30-year prepayable fixed-rate mortgage – it's like the bedrock of the housing system – is critical.”
“Short-term market and economic prognostication is largely a fool’s errand, we invest according to a strategy that makes the need to rely on short-term market or economic assessments largely irrelevant.”
“The President is the CEO of this business that we call America.”
“The untold secret of McDonald’s is that when you sell a restaurant to a franchisee, sales typically go up a lot because the franchisees do a much better job managing the store.”
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“While knowing how to value businesses is essential for investment success, the first and perhaps most important step in the investment process is knowing where to look for opportunities.”
