Irving Kahn Quotes
108 Irving Kahn Quotes
1 2 3
I understand that net-net stocks are not too common anymore, but today’s investors should not complain too much because there were only a handful of industries in which to look for stocks in the old days. Now there are so many different types of businesses in so many different countries that investors can easily find something. Besides, the Internet has made more information available. If you complain that you cannot find opportunities, then that means you either haven’t looked hard enough or you haven’t read broadly enough.
Irving Kahn
Reading about science gives me an open mind! When European scientists discovered uranium and found that it could produce power, people thought they had had too much to drink. Many scientific ideas that sounded unbelievable in the early days of my life have now become reality, so it is important to read science books and to learn about the future.
Irving Kahn
In the early days, many companies had opaque financial reporting standards, and so it took quite some effort to read between the lines and delve into the footnotes of financial statements to find out about the quality of a company’s management. Sometimes the lack of information made things difficult, and sometimes company executives did not treat shareholders as if they were business owners.
Irving Kahn
[On establishing the New York Society of Security Analysts (NYSSA) in 1937 with Benjamin Graham and 18 other security analysts] We tried to arrange meetings with corporate executives, and we convinced them to come to a cheap restaurant in New York City, where we showed them the advantage of speaking to us because we could help promote their companies if we could learn more about their businesses. Those meetings were very useful at first, but over the years they have turned into what we call ‘analysts conference calls,’ which are less productive because what executives try to do now is manage analysts’ expectations.
Irving Kahn
[On the Financial Analysts Journal] The challenge was then and continues today: how to bridge the gap between theory and practice.
Irving Kahn
Don’t depend on recent or current figures to forecast futures prices; remember that many others knew them before you did.
Irving Kahn
Prices are continuously molded by fears, hopes, and unreliable estimates, capital is always at risk unless you buy better than average values.
Irving Kahn
Remember that many complex factors – such as accounting choices and the human problems within management and with large shareholders – lie behind reported earnings.
Irving Kahn
Disregard the competition at your peril – they are always attacking your company’s trade position and its earnings.
Irving Kahn
Don’t trust quarterly earnings. Verify reports through the source and application statement. Figures can lie and liars can figure.
Irving Kahn
Recognize that all industries must operate under increasing restraints from government regulation.
Irving Kahn
Look beyond the one or two largest companies in a given industry.
Irving Kahn
There are many paths leading up the mountain of financial success. Who has not been tempted to try some of the shortcuts?
Irving Kahn
Enthusiasts for dollar averaging argued that it made sense to buy more shares when the prices fell in order to ‘average down’ the cost of one’s purchases. But the real reason for the popularity of dollar averaging was that it represented a mechanical alternative to market timing based on judgment.
Irving Kahn
Investors will reject the index fund concept as an unconditional failure.
Irving Kahn
The analyst must both practice, and to his client preach, patience.
Irving Kahn
It is unlikely that, in this ever-changing world any formula will ever successfully replace the study and objective analysis of individual securities.
Irving Kahn
[In 1977] What will happen when, as is certain, the index fund concept encounters a market climate in which it performs less well than it has in the recent climate? The price effect of some billions of dollars of index funds trying to unload at the same time should be spectacular – and chastening to any investor foolish enough to think that index fund investing is ‘prudent’.
Irving Kahn
Those who manage index funds cannot expect the contents of these indexes to be any more permanent in the future than they have been in the past.
Irving Kahn
[In 1977] The index fund will come and go, leaving the time-tested guidelines of professional investing unchanged.
Irving Kahn
Why are results so often below average? I believe there are two reasons. First, the institutional client illogically expects security selection to be limited to the major corporations conventionally selected by others. This conventional bias dooms performance to an approximation of the averages…Second, the institutional investors believes he should have his hand held a few times a year to confirm his own reactions to the current scene.
Irving Kahn
Results that are even modestly above average… should sell themselves.
Irving Kahn
Mixing short-term expectations with assessments of the slower forces behind security prices dilutes long-term returns.
Irving Kahn
If I had approached Philips and said, ‘You are treating the North American corporation unfairly; please pay back shareholders for the past 20 years of taking advantage of them,’ they would have said no.
Irving Kahn
[In 2009] Never buy popular stocks, except maybe in a depression.
Irving Kahn
History mostly repeats itself, but it’s never exact.
Irving Kahn
[At age 103 to a 40 year old] I think people my age are brighter than people your age. You don’t make the same mistakes and that by itself gives you an enormous edge.
Irving Kahn
[In 2005 at the age of 100 scoffing at retirement] It’s like I’m married to the business, more so because my wife isn’t here. It’s sort of like a game with me. It’s fun to get things right for the right reason.
Irving Kahn
I’m a passionate reader. That’s why being an investor is the perfect job for me.
Irving Kahn
[On working even more since his wife passed away] I simply wasn’t able to find anyone else as interesting as the woman I shared a bed with for 65 years.
Irving Kahn
You have to stay in motion, be open and get to know people from all over the world.
Irving Kahn
[At age 104] Learn things that you can’t do yet – that keeps you young!
Irving Kahn
Successful investors, like successful doctors, must have a good understanding of the hard facts expressed in numbers…
Irving Kahn
If the art of investing were actually easy, or quickly achieved, no one would be in the lower or middle classes.
Irving Kahn
To be a successful investor learning is essential.
Irving Kahn
Security prices are as volatile as ocean waves – they range from calm to stormy.
Irving Kahn
Shrewd investors must… resist following the crowd; when everyone is making money these investors know this portends a decline.
Irving Kahn
The public is spellbound by daily price moves. Less noticed are long-term economic changes that ultimately set future prices.
Irving Kahn
The inconsistent results of most money managers over most annual periods is evidence of how unreliable it is to predict the general market.
Irving Kahn
Value investing… is one of the best ways to step apart from the crowd and to protect oneself from the unpredictable behavior of the securities markets.
Irving Kahn
1 2 3
Return from Irving Kahn Quotes to Quoteswise.com