Walter Schloss Quotes
104 Walter Schloss Quotes
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Remember the work of compounding. For example, if you can make 12% a year and reinvest the money back, you will double your money in 6 yrs, taxes excluded. Remember the rule of 72. Your rate of return into 72 will tell you the number of years to double your money.
Walter Schloss
Prefer stocks over bonds. Bonds will limit your gains and inflation will reduce your purchasing power.
Walter Schloss
I like to look at the balance sheet and I don’t like debt because it can really get a company into trouble. I prefer to buy basic businesses with strong balance sheets.
Walter Schloss
I try to protect myself from permanent loss of capital by investing in stocks that are depressed.
Walter Schloss
If the company is a relatively new business, I probably wouldn’t buy it because it would be much harder to evaluate. But if the company was in business for the past 20 or 30 years or so, you would get a wider picture of its track record and then you would look at the balance sheet.
Walter Schloss
I like to buy companies with very little debt so it has a margin of safety.
Walter Schloss
I like to buy basic businesses not high flyers that sell at huge multiples.
Walter Schloss
I like companies that sell near their book value.
Walter Schloss
You have to do a certain amount of research.
Walter Schloss
[At the age of 92] I’m really not in the position to run around the country to meet with management like Peter Lynch used to do. It takes too much out of you. I want to live to be a hundred, so I decided against doing so. I limit myself to looking at the annual report, the balance sheet, looking at the background of the company, seeing that the management owns a lot of the stock in the company and the reputation of the people running it.
Walter Schloss
I don’t really focus on what the earnings are going to be next year, I try to protect myself and that I don’t lose money.
Walter Schloss
I think it’s much easier to identify when something is cheap rather than when to sell.
Walter Schloss
In value investing, if you find A has gone up but B is much cheaper you switch to the cheaper but generally we sell after a period of one year to get the benefit of taxes.
Walter Schloss
If we buy the stock at the 20’s and, historically, the price has gone up to the 40’s and 50’s, when it gets back to the 40’s and 50’s we feel it has got back to where it was before.
Walter Schloss
We often find that we sell a little too early. But when you sell something you have to make it attractive for someone to buy it.
Walter Schloss
We like to buy stocks on the way down. A lot of people don’t like that approach but I’m comfortable buying on the way down.
Walter Schloss
[On a real test for a value investor] A stock has lost half, and you go in and buy more. That is not easy. People will think you are crazy.
Walter Schloss
Ben [Graham] really loved to teach. He could have made a lot more money if he hadn’t been so interested in teaching.
Walter Schloss
I didn’t get to go to college. I went to work in the Depression because my folks didn’t have any money, and I worked as a runner on Wall Street and then in the cage, tallying stocks.
Walter Schloss
[In 1972] I’m not very bright. I can’t compete with all the bright people, and especially the ones who have lots of corporate contacts. I don’t know anybody. I have to buy what I’m comfortable with. These fellows that buy, even Procter and Gamble and General Electric, why, those stocks go up and down all the time. I just wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if I owned stocks like that.
Walter Schloss
[On his biggest investment mistake] When I was working with Graham in 1949 I think a man came to me and said that there is this company whose product is rather good because it deals with computers. I went to Graham and told him I like the stock – it had risen quickly from 18 to 21 – and Graham said, ‘You know Walter, we don’t buy that kind of stock.’ The stock then went up to 50, and in due course to 2000 before the stock was split. The stock was Xerox. It turned out to be a tremendous buy, but Graham did not want to buy it because he did not know enough about the business.
Walter Schloss
You may lose at times, like in 2008. But it pays to be an optimist. My father died at 104. I want to beat him.
Walter Schloss
Ben Graham changed my life.
Walter Schloss
It may take a long time, but I can sleep at night. I’m not in a hurry. Things always take longer than you want them to.
Walter Schloss
BONUS Edwin Schloss Quote
[On summarizing his and Walter’s investing approach] We try to buy stocks cheap.
Edwin Schloss
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