Top 120 Seth Klarman Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Be focused on process and not outcome.”

— Seth Klarman

2. “The single greatest edge an investor can have is a long-term orientation.”

— Seth Klarman

3. “Over the long run, the crowd is always wrong.”

— Seth Klarman

4. “The stock market is the story of cycles and of the human behavior that is responsible for overreactions in both directions.”

— Seth Klarman

5. “Investing is the intersection of economics and psychology.”

— Seth Klarman

6. “Never stop reading. History doesn’t repeat, but it does rhyme.”

— Seth Klarman

7. “Sometimes buying early on the way down looks like being wrong, but it isn’t.”

— Seth Klarman

8. “I don’t have a Bloomberg on my desk. I don’t care.”

— Seth Klarman

9. “The way to maximize outcome is to focus on the process.”

— Seth Klarman

10. “Loss avoidance must be the cornerstone of your investment philosophy.”

— Seth Klarman

11. “We worry top-down, but we invest bottom-up.”

— Seth Klarman

12. “Value investing requires a great deal of hard work, unusually strict discipline, and a long-term investment horizon. Few are willing and able to devote sufficient time and effort to become value investors, and only a fraction of those have the proper mind-set to succeed.”

— Seth Klarman

13. “Value investing is the discipline of buying shares at a significant discount from their current underlying values and holding them until more of their value is realised. The element of a bargain is the key to the process.”

— Seth Klarman

14. “I find value investing to be a stimulating, intellectually challenging, ever changing, and financially rewarding discipline.”

— Seth Klarman

15. “Value investing is at its core the marriage of a contrarian streak and a calculator.”

— Seth Klarman

16. “Value investing is predicated on the efficient market hypothesis being wrong.”

— Seth Klarman

17. “Always look for forced urgent selling.”

— Seth Klarman

18. “Once you adopt a value-investment strategy, any other investment behavior starts to seem like gambling.”

— Seth Klarman

19. “We don’t deal in absolutes. We deal in probabilities.”

— Seth Klarman

20. “Patience and discipline can make you look foolishly out of touch until they make you look prudent and even prescient.”

— Seth Klarman

21. “Do not trust financial market risk models. Despite the predilection of some analysts to model the financial markets using sophisticated mathematics, the markets are governed by behavioral science, not physical science.”

— Seth Klarman

22. “Graham’s wonderful sentence as, an investor needs only two things: cash and courage. Having only one of them is not enough.”

— Seth Klarman

23. “While some might mistakenly consider value investing a mechanical tool for identifying bargains, it is actually a comprehensive investment philosophy that emphasizes the need to perform in-depth fundamental analysis, pursue long-term investment results, limit risk, and resist crowd psychology.”

— Seth Klarman

24. “You must buy on the way down. There is far more volume on the way down than on the way back up, and far less competition among buyers. It is almost always better to be too early than too late, but you must be prepared for price markdowns on what you buy.”

— Seth Klarman

25. “In reality, no one knows what the market will do; trying to predict it is a waste of time, and investing based upon that prediction is a speculative undertaking.”

— Seth Klarman

26. “Investors should always keep in mind that the most important metric is not the returns achieved but the returns weighed against the risks incurred. Ultimately, nothing should be more important to investors than the ability to sleep soundly at night.”

— Seth Klarman

27. “Having great clients is the key to investment success.”

— Seth Klarman

28. “Value investors have to be patient and disciplined, but what I really think is you need not to be greedy. If you’re greedy and you leverage, you blow up. Almost every financial blow up is because of leverage.”

— Seth Klarman

29. “People should be highly sceptical of anyone’s including their own, ability to predict the future, and instead pursue strategies that can survive whatever may occur.”

— Seth Klarman

30. “Limit risk with: Deep analysis Bargain purchase Sensitivity analysis.”

— Seth Klarman

31. “A margin of safety is achieved when securities are purchased at prices sufficiently below underlying value to allow for human error, bad luck, or extreme volatility in a complex, unpredictable and rapidly changing world.”

— Seth Klarman

32. “Hold cash when opportunities are not presenting themselves.”

— Seth Klarman

33. “When a Wall Street analyst or broker expresses optimism, investors must take it with a grain of salt.”

— Seth Klarman

34. “While it might seem that anyone can be a value investor, the essential characteristics of this type of investor-patience, discipline, and risk aversion-may well be genetically determined.”

— Seth Klarman

35. “The avoidance of loss is the surest way to ensure a profitable outcome.”

— Seth Klarman

36. “I think markets will never be efficient because of human nature.”

— Seth Klarman

37. “The inability to hold cash and the pressure to be fully invested at all times meant that when the plug was pulled out of the tub, all boats dropped as the water rushed down the drain.”

— Seth Klarman

38. “Generally, the greater the stigma or revulsion, the better the bargain.”

— Seth Klarman

39. “Courage is a function of process.”

— Seth Klarman

40. “My view is that an investor is better off knowing a lot about a few investments than knowing a little about each of a great many holdings. One’s very best idea’s are likely to generate higher returns for a given level of risk than one’s hundredth or thousandth best idea.”

— Seth Klarman

41. “To a value investor, investments come in three varieties: undervalued at one price, fairly valued at another price, and overvalued at still some higher price. The goal is to buy the first, avoid the second, and sell the third.”

— Seth Klarman

42. “The strategy of buying what’s in favor is a fool’s errand, ensuring long-term underperformance. Only by standing against the prevailing winds – selectively, but resolutely – can an investor prosper over time. But for a while, a value investor typically underperforms.”

— Seth Klarman

43. “Typically, we make money when we buy things. We count the profits later, but we know we have captured them when we buy the bargain.”

— Seth Klarman

44. “Why should the immediate opportunity set be the only one considered, when tomorrow’s may well be considerably more fertile than today’s?”

— Seth Klarman

45. “Risk is not inherent in an investment; it is always relative to the price paid. Uncertainty is not the same as risk. Indeed, when great uncertainty – such as in the fall of 2008 – drives securities prices to especially low levels, they often become less risky investments.”

— Seth Klarman

46. “Value investors should completely exit a security by the time it reaches full value; owning overvalued securities is the realm of speculators.”

— Seth Klarman

47. “One must understand the importance of an endless drive to get information and seek value.”

— Seth Klarman

48. “You need humility to say ‘I might be wrong.’”

— Seth Klarman

49. “The near absence of bargains works as a reverse indicator for us. When we find there is little worth buying, there is probably much worth selling.”

— Seth Klarman

50. “We work really hard never to get confused with what we know from what we think or hope or wish.”

— Seth Klarman