Mariko Gordon Quotes
103 Mariko Gordon Quotes
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[In November 2009.] School won't turn you into a world-class cynic - markets can.
Mariko Gordon
[In November 2009.] You are a blind man groping an elephant. Businesses are complex. They have heaps and heaps of employees, customers, end markets, geographies, regulators, competitors, processes, raw materials, factories, etc. Investors don't really know what's happening inside the elephant - the elephant doesn't always know what's happening inside the elephant… Today the elephant is a paintbrush; tomorrow it's a snake.
Mariko Gordon
[In November 2009.] Knowing where the crowd is headed - whether for logical reasons or not - is an important component in investment decisions.
Mariko Gordon
[In November 2009.] Business models - not industries - are what really matter.
Mariko Gordon
[In November 2009.] Understanding the industry matters. But understanding how a particular company makes money is a more important question in determining its future value.
Mariko Gordon
[In November 2009.] Simplicity rules. When you're in school, mastering complex stuff is cool. The more complicated it is, the smarter you feel. In investing, it's the opposite: If you don't understand it, it will lose you money. (Even if you do understand it, it can lose you money. But if you don't understand it, it will definitely lose you money).
Mariko Gordon
[In November 2009.] Most investment cases rest on one or two simple premises. There's a misvaluation opportunity caused by investors - a misunderstanding, a temporary absence of demand, a different time horizon, a superficial, misleading analysis.
Mariko Gordon
[In November 2009.] The way to make money is to question the Emperor's new clothes - to be the kid who trusted his eyes and didn't assume that everyone else had it right.
Mariko Gordon
[In December 2009.] People not in business can view it as this scary, suspicious enterprise. But classic, bottom-up stock picking is much more of a creative exercise than they think
Mariko Gordon
[In December 2009.] We’re looking for ‘fat pitches,’ where our estimate of the potential upside is at least three times the downside and that upside produces at least a 50% gain over a two-year period, without making greater-fool assumptions about multiple expansion.
Mariko Gordon
[In December 2009.] The best time to buy is not just when a stock offers good value, but when we can also clearly define what might drive the share price higher – which, in most cases, is better than-expected sales, earnings or cashflow growth.
Mariko Gordon
[In December 2009.] Financial statements are really just a narrative that tells a story, and some do so in a much more logical and consistent way than others.
Mariko Gordon
[In December 2009.] In looking at stocks you’re trying to find where your assumptions are affirmed or contradicted – that's where the information value lies.
Mariko Gordon
[In December 2009.] Daruma was a fifth-century Indian monk who reached China after a perilous sea voyage and became the founder of Zen Buddhism. The story goes that he crossed the Yangtze River on a reed and meditated continuously for nine years, losing his arms and legs in the process. You can see why I thought the name embodied resoluteness, perseverance and resilience.
Mariko Gordon
[In December 2009.] Many of the tenets of Zen – separating illusion from reality, non-attachment to emotions and ideas, self-discipline, and embracing impermanence – are also keys to successful investing.
Mariko Gordon
[In January 2010.] As professional stockpickers, we're challenged on a daily basis to separate truth from fairytale.
Mariko Gordon
[In February 2010.] Investing is perfect for curious cats like me - it's a career that compels you to leverage your experience, continually learn new things, and pull it all together in a way that makes it near impossible to be bored.
Mariko Gordon
[In February 2010.] When markets are cheap, we have more ideas than time; triage of the best is the way we add value. When markets are expensive and ideas are scarce, we get the job done by scouring efficiently, patiently and thoroughly.
Mariko Gordon
[In April 2010.] When it comes to evaluating an investment opportunity, sometimes what you don't see can be the most telling.
Mariko Gordon
[In April 2010.] After sitting through a PowerPoint presentation choked with graph after graph, I realized that there was no mention of cash flow. Nothing. Surely a company parsing through more data than needed for a space shuttle launch should talk about how much cash flow they created? A simple question clarified the omission. Sure enough, the company hadn't generated free cash flow since the Pleistocene.
Mariko Gordon
[In April 2010.] When we visit the manufacturing operations of a company I always check for two things: prominently displayed and up-to-date safety statistics (and by this, I don't mean Soviet-style workplace exhortations) and manufacturing stats displayed at each workstation. Over the years I've learned (and had confirmed by both CEOs and insurance risk managers/auditors/underwriters) that companies that pay attention to their safety record tend to be good operators and are on top of their manufacturing processes. Not there? Red flag.
Mariko Gordon
[In April 2010.] You'll often learn more by keeping an eye on what's missing than on what's staring you right in the face.
Mariko Gordon
[In June 2010.] When it comes to air travel, turbulence is to be expected. If you're not of the same mindset with your investments, you may be in for a bumpy, barfy ride.
Mariko Gordon
[In June 2010.] I learned early on from my grandfather of the awesome power of leverage to wreak havoc on the downside. To this day, I remain a chicken about debt, but my cast-iron stomach keeps me happily in the investment game.
Mariko Gordon
[In July 2010.] When a stock doesn't react to the news as you expect it's a sign of a possible investment opportunity.
Mariko Gordon
[In July 2010.] Any time a stock doesn't react the way you think it should to news, there's an investment opportunity waiting to be uncovered.
Mariko Gordon
[In August 2010.] Humans don't like to admit mistakes. ‘Cutting our losses’ means accepting that we were wrong, a realization that for many of us perfectionists can be painful. We'd rather maintain the fiction of a mistake-proof existence by keeping a bad decision on life support and refusing to let go.
Mariko Gordon
[In August 2010.] The goal in investing is not to avoid mistakes... it's to pick more winners than losers and to make sure the winners benefit you more than your losers cost.
Mariko Gordon
[In August 2010.] It doesn't matter whether we're underwater or sitting on a tidy profit. The only relevant question is, ‘Do we want to own these at this price?’
Mariko Gordon
[In December 2010.] Like viewing a parade, investing takes both a high and low vantage point to truly appreciate everything that's going on and to uncover the best ideas. Without a long-term, big picture perspective, the portfolio ends up looking like a gerbil on an exercise wheel. Without a close-up view that homes in on the details, you won't have the stomach to invest against the crowd or hold on during volatile markets.
Mariko Gordon
[In February 2011.] You can't straight-line an average growth rate into the future without unpacking all the bits that are needed to make it happen… Remember the whole Dot Com bust in 2000, when valuations were based on eyeballs? It appears that in just a decade, a new generation of analysts ignorant of the perils of creative metrics, has emerged.
Mariko Gordon
[In March 2011.] Making mistakes and fixing mistakes is not the same thing. While it's easy to tote up investment mistakes, it's a lot harder to gauge whether a firm ever learns from its mistakes.
Mariko Gordon
[In March 2011.] To ignore a firm's culture around mistakes is… a mistake.
Mariko Gordon
[In September 2011.] In 1999 for example, our small-cap lagged by over 1700 basis points. In 2000 we beat by over 2200 basis points. Did the portfolio change? Not to speak of. What changed was market sentiment; doing nothing was the right call.
Mariko Gordon
[In November 2011.] I watched a pension fund board disembowel a money manager for averaging all the way down in Enron, an experience that made me seriously consider switching careers and becoming a macramé instructor.
Mariko Gordon
[In December 2011.] It's much easier to uncover questions than answers…
Mariko Gordon
[In December 2011.] This is a business in which you're always making mistakes and,
frankly, there's so much arrogance, I've found a healthy dose of introspection is
far more liberating that it is paralyzing. It leaves you that much better prepared to
fight another day.
Mariko Gordon
[In March 2012.] As an investor you will be destined to mediocrity if you do not continue to grow.
Mariko Gordon
[In April 2012.] Successful investing… is less about rocket science calculations than it is about avoiding the psychological traps that cognitive dissonance sets for the unwary.
Mariko Gordon
[In June 2012.] Investing is supposed to be based on something more intellectually rigorous than whether or not
David Einhorn asks a question.
Mariko Gordon
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