Mario Gabelli Quotes

102 Mario Gabelli Quotes

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What we like to do is to buy, buy, buy when everyone doesn’t want it.
Mario Gabelli

The ignored is where we love.
Mario Gabelli

I never understood the rush to invest in index funds.
Mario Gabelli

Businesses don’t change in value as quickly as the market.
Mario Gabelli

Sometimes managements forget that they work for shareholders.
Mario Gabelli

[On investing] This is not a job. This is my passion.
Mario Gabelli

[On his investing strategy in 25 words or less] Graham and Dodd plus Warren Buffett.
Mario Gabelli

[In May 1997] Some people collect art or ride horses or play in castles in Ireland. I like to pick stocks. I’m going to be doing this 40 years from now.
Mario Gabelli

The ancient Greek dramatist Euripides said, ‘The best of seers is he who guesses well.’
Mario Gabelli

If somebody looks at me today and says ‘You made a lot of money,’ it wasn’t always that way. I still ride subways!
Mario Gabelli



Cost of capital always affects a company’s values. That’s why stocks tend to be valued lower when interest rates rise.
Mario Gabelli

You approach stocks as if they were pieces of a business you want to buy at a discount…
Mario Gabelli

[In June 1987 on the stock market] The shotgun approach is over. Now the rifle should come out.
Mario Gabelli

Value investing, the way I define it, is finding a good business run by smart people, at a reasonably good price relative to its values today and five or more years from now.
Mario Gabelli

You don’t have to be right all the time. Even Ted Williams struck out three out of five times.
Mario Gabelli

[In March 2009] Plain old stock picking.
Mario Gabelli

Why am I buying it? Because I have a margin of safety.
Mario Gabelli

We’re not buying a piece of paper, we’re buying a business.
Mario Gabelli

[EBIT] is the lifeblood of a company. That’s the amount of cash management has to pay down debt, put capital in and buy back shares.
Mario Gabelli

[In July 2006] When I started in this business 40 years ago, I spent half my time on research and the other half on things like investment banking. Today I spend half my time on research and the rest hiring analysts.
Mario Gabelli



[On his funds - They] Continue to be in the forefront of value investors.
Mario Gabelli

[On purchasing wireless spectrum at a discount and then selling some of the licences for quick profits] We followed all the rules.
Mario Gabelli

[In May 1997] Nothing has changed. Our numbers have continued to exceed our benchmark of 10% plus inflation. Beating the S&P has never been our goal. Saying I’m doing badly is the same as saying Michael Jordan can’t play baseball.
Mario Gabelli

[In May 1997] Everybody wants entertainment. MTV can be leveraged almost like a Coca-Cola bottle.
Mario Gabelli

In 1966, when I was a brokerage analyst, I spent about 50% of my time arranging data and writing reports, and the other 50% researching stocks. Today, I spend half my time running the business and half doing research.
Mario Gabelli

[In May 1997] In 1979, when I was training analysts, I would sit down and explain things two or three times. Now it’s one and a half times.
Mario Gabelli

Over the past 20 years, our annual macroeconomic and market forecasts haven’t always been right. Fortunately for our clients… our investment methodology is not built upon accurately predicting interest-rate trends or timing the market, but rather on picking stocks, and many of our picks have fared quite well. One reason is that we’ve had a good batting average identifying trends – we call them catalysts – that have unlocked value in selected industry groups.
Mario Gabelli

[In 1996] Good old-fashioned Yankee ingenuity has made us more than competitive with Japan and Germany. We are now in a terrific position to conquer new international economic frontiers.
Mario Gabelli

Investors of our persuasion – stockpickers, if you will – can’t talk about investment trends without naming some names.
Mario Gabelli

We believe free cash flow, defined as earnings before interest, taxes and depreciation (EBITD), or a slight variation, EBITDA, both minus the capital expenditures necessary to grow the business, is the best barometer of a company’s value.
Mario Gabelli



When the informed industrialist is evaluating a business for purchase, he or she is not going to put a lot of weight on stated book value… What that informed industrialist wants to know is: How much cash is this business throwing off today and how much is he going to have to invest in this business to sustain or grow this stream of cash in the future.
Mario Gabelli

Clever corporate managements can be creative in booking earnings.
Mario Gabelli

Just as growth-stock investors will pay a higher price-to-earnings ratio for higher earnings growth, private-market-value investors will pay a higher multiple of cash flow for faster cash-flow growth.
Mario Gabelli

Sophisticated business buyers will look beyond the balance sheet for hidden assets – valuable land on the books at original cost or an overfunded pension plan – as well as hidden liabilities, like unfunded health-care responsibilities or potentially costly environmental problems.
Mario Gabelli

You can usually find fundamental bargains – stocks selling at substantial discounts to private market value. Then you have to ask the subjective questions: Who might want to own this company? Would management be receptive to a takeover proposal? Are the target company’s assets so unique that someone might pay well above fair value? If you can come up with some positive answers to questions like these, you may well have found yourself a terrific takeover candidate.
Mario Gabelli

[In 1996] The average annualised return on equities over the last 15 years, as measured by the S&P 500, is 14.8%. That’s almost 50% above the historical return on stocks on an annualised basis. When you compound this out 10 years, the differential is staggering. Will we see the same kind of returns from stocks over the next 15 years? I wouldn’t bet the ranch on it. Sooner, or later, this roaring bull market will end, either with a substantial correction or a bear market or preferably, an extended period of much more modest returns.
Mario Gabelli

[In a lower growth environment] Market-neutral disciplines like risk arbitrage, which is capable of delivering low – to mid-double-digit annualised returns regardless of the direction of the broad equities market should be considered.
Mario Gabelli

What we want to do is to earn for our clients, after taxes and after inflation, 10% a year.
Mario Gabelli

At Gabelli Funds we do bottom-up research. We read annual reports, visit the competition, talk to customers and meet the management of a company before we invest.
Mario Gabelli

We look for a catalyst – something happening in the company or industry that may create value.
Mario Gabelli



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