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The minute you start using fancy technology, there are so many steps from the raw data to the conclusion that there is plenty of scope for unintended massaging of the data. Methodology is important but your research should be concept driven – not methodology driven. Lastly, using sophisticated techniques (especially if computers are involved) lulls you into a false sense of thinking you have done something “scientific”. The use of hi-tech is – to quote Peter Medawar – seen, unfortunately, as a sign of intellectual manhood.

– VS Ramachandran

All you had to do to make money in the crisis – was have money to spend and the nerve to spend to it. You didn’t need caution, conservatism, risk control, patience selectivity, discipline, any of those things. All you needed was money and nerve. But not all the time, because sometime money and nerve will get you killed. One of the keys to investing is to know which is which.

– Howard Marks

Make your position size more a function of not how much you can make, but really how much you can lose. So manage your position based on your downward loss perspective not your upward potential.

– James Dinan

A war of attrition is one where two sides essentially grind against each other and the winner is the one which lasts longest. A decisive battle is one where a conflict is won through a single, acute encounter where, due to either demoralizing or circumstance reasons, one side gives up. It’s the knock-out punch vs. the fight to exhaustion.

When applying this dichotomy to competition, we need to be careful about who we define as competitors.

– Horace Dediu

When a surfer gets up and catches the wave and just stays there, he can go a long, long time. But if he gets off the wave, he becomes mired in shallows.

– Charlie Munger

There is only one success: to be able to live your life in your own way.

– Christopher Morley