Ian Cassel Quotes

“10% of successful stock picking is picking great stocks. The other 90% is not selling them.”

“18 years ago, my mentor picks me up from the airport and we went to a casino. We played craps, took out a $10k marker. The table was empty. He started winning and the table got full. He looked at me and said, "Whether it's stocks, craps, business, life, people are attracted to winners.”

“A microcap investor’s goal is to find something great when no analyst covers it and still be holding when the 10th analyst initiates coverage on it.”

“All great companies started as small companies.”

“All great companies started as small companies. Find them.”

“Do everything with excellence. How you do the small things is how you do everything. You don’t know who is watching.”

“Don’t spend the next ten years bragging about the returns you had 20 years ago. Keep learning and evolving.”

“During a lifetime you will own 10-20 big winners and 100’s of losers. Successful stock picking isn’t just picking winners. It also means picking out the losers in the portfolio. Losers aren’t stocks that go down – they are underperforming businesses you keep holding.”

“f you don’t cringe a little bit when you read something you wrote or believed 3-5-10 years ago then you aren’t growing.”

“Great stocks are doubted the whole way up”

“Here is a fact that few in the financial world want you to know. Individual investors have an edge over investment managers, advisors, analysts, or anyone forced to prove how smart they are to others. You don’t need to have an opinion on everything. You don’t have distractions. All you have to do is focus on making a few good investment decisions per year and living a great life.”

“I believe the true financial test is turning a small amount of money into a larger amount of money and then supporting yourself on that capital over the long term.”

“I built my capital base in my early 20’s by concentrating in 2-4 companies. I was right half the time and different degrees of wrong the other half. It makes for a volatile portfolio, but I still think it’s the best way to learn because every decision is amplified (good and bad).”

“I don't invest the same way as I did 3, 5, 10, 15 years ago. Investing is a journey of continuous improvement. Inside every investor is a better investor.”

“I started out investing in story stocks.”

“I think a lot of people make the mistake of thinking they need enough money to do nothing. This is incorrect. You just need enough to do whatever you want.”

“If you don’t feel uncomfortable, stretched, and intimidated by a goal you are pursuing you aren’t thinking big enough.”

“Investing’s greatest lessons can’t be taught. We like to think they can, but they can't. They have to be experienced and the best teacher is loss.”

“It's a great sign when a majority of people get angry at you for being bullish on a stock, sector, and/or market.”

“It's easy to over-analyze when stocks are going down (fear) and under-analyze when stocks are going up (greed).”

“It’s crazy the complaining about stock prices. If you aren’t excited about some of the prices you are getting you are in the wrong business.”

“It’s often how we navigate the valleys in our lives that dictates our future direction.”

“Many of us already own the stocks we need to outperform. We just can’t get scared out of them.”

“Me talking to my daughter - "Daddy will help you."

Me talking to my son - "Life is hard. Figure it out boy.”

“Nothing better than stumbling on a new idea that makes you stop everything you are doing.”

“Nothing tests your conviction like falling stock prices. Conviction isn’t proven on the mountaintop, it’s proven in the valley.”

“One of the ultimate signs of investment maturity is when you can buy a stock higher that you passed on lower - when you can look at the same company through unbiased eyes not calloused by a cost basis that could have been.”

“Only later do you realize if you didn’t survive the last thing you went through you wouldn’t be tough enough to survive what you are going through right now. Your reward for overcoming your last challenge is your next challenge.”

“Overprepare. Do the work. Be intense. It’s that attitude and work ethic that starts attracting people and opportunities. You start accomplishing things you weren’t supposed to accomplish. You start believing in yourself. This is the key to success.”

“Success isn’t a zero sum game. You are only competing against yourself and your own limitations.”