Best Advice

What I learned from Ben Graham

Jean-Marie Eveillard . Manager, First Eagle Funds

Benjamin Graham's book, "The Intelligent Investor," has three lessons. The first is humility, that the future is uncertain. There are people on Wall Street who will predict the Dow will be at a certain level, but that is nonsense. The second thing is that because the future is uncertain, there's a need for caution. The third thing is that securities can be more than just paper. You should try to figure out the intrinsic value of a business. In the short term, the market is a voting machine where people vote with their dollars, but in the long term, it's a weighing machine that measures the realities of business. 

Be humble about what you don't know

Richard Branson. Chairman, Virgin Group

Branson says he used to confuse gross profit with net until a board member explained it this way."Pretend you're fishing. Net is all the fish in your net at the end of the year. Gross is that plus everything that got away."