Bill Ackman

I’ve seen very few people in the world accomplish anything unless they were optimists
You can learn investing by reading books
We’re not a trader at all. We don’t trade. We buy a stake in the business. We get actively involved in the business. We work to make the business more valuable
I’m not emotional about investments. Investing is something where you have to be purely rational and not let emotion affect your decision making – just the facts
I am always prepared to do the right thing regardless of what other people think
In the investing business you need a – a high degree of confidence but you also need a high degree of humbleness and you have to balance those two… Humbleness comes from mistakes
We invest generally in very good companies that have lost their way. And with better management, enormous value can be created
We don’t predict when the stock market is going up and down or what’s causing that. So we’re not in a rush to get out
We buy 8, 9, 10 percent of the company when we see long-term value in the investment, when the pieces are worth significantly more than the entire business or an operational change needs to take place
We are applauding the plan for adopting key strategic initiatives that will create a lot of shareholder value. I am not going to run a proxy contest
Raising money for a start-up hedge fund is a lot like blind dating. You meet someone you’ve never met before, you have a limited time in which to make the pitch, and then you try to close the deal.
When I decided to run a hedge fund out of school, I’d meet with 100 people before one or two would finally agree to invest with me.
You want a product to be unique. You don’t want it to be a commodity that everyone else can sell. Because when you sell a commodity – anyone can sell it and they can sell it at a better price and it’s very hard to make a profit doing that
Investing is not a business where every investment is profitable
As long as I’m operating honestly, ethically and doing the right thing, I feel very good about what I do
We’re a very concentrated investor
We focus on things we can understand
Ultimately the fundamentals will determine the outcome
Fundamentally what drives most human behavior is basically foreplay
We don’t think really month to month or quarter to quarter. The value of a business is the present value of the cash you can take out of it over fifty years. The next year is worth month than a year fifty out
You should think more about what you’re paying versus what the business is worth. As opposed to what you’re paying versus what they’re going to earn next quarter
We do not generally use margin leverage in our investment strategy
Our risk management approach is to: (1) put our eggs in a few very sturdy baskets, (2) store those baskets in very safe places where they cannot be taken away from us and sold at precisely the wrong time due to margin calls, and (3) to know and track those baskets and their contents very carefully. We call this approach the sleep-at-night approach to risk management. If I can’t, we won’t
From day one, I was always unafraid to ask someone to invest because, I thought that, while capital was a commodity, good investment ideas were rare assets
Investing is one of the few things you can learn on your own
So the only good thing I had going for me was that a very reputable investment firm with a track record better than [Warren] Buffett’s from 1979 to the present agreed to put in $50 million
When I first started in business, I didn’t know when it was time to move on. But I learned a lot about what I call the return-on-invested-brain-damage calculation. If the return isn’t high enough to justify the brain damage, I won’t spend the time
Here I am, I own 25 percent of the company. I’m offering to help. Their stock is trading for pennies and they won’t let me on the board?
What we do is we look for businesses where we think they are not likely to be materially impacted by extrinsic factors – interest rates go up or down a couple of hundred basis points, oil prices go up $25 a barrel, – we try to find very robust, stable businesses which are only very modestly levered and as a result we don’t need to think particularly ‘top down.’ We don’t need to think about exactly where interest rates are going to be for us to do well. We look for a big discount. If you can buy something for 50 cents in the dollar – yes
In order to be successful, you have to make sure that being rejected doesn’t bother you at all
You should surround yourself with people that believe in you, in life, and in business
What the market tells you in the short term is what a certain subset of people believe. That doesn’t mean they’re right

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