Quotes from Whitney Tilson

When reviewing one's portfolio, it is important to be aware of common mental mistakes that may lead to bad decisions. The most powerful is commitment bias, which, as manifested in investing, is the tendency to fall in love with one's stocks.

Mueller is the leading North American provider of water infrastructure and flow control products - things such as fire hydrants, valves, pipes, fittings, and couplings. While this is no doubt a mundane business, it is also an excellent one.

Because I'm a very public figure, everybody knows what my returns are.

There is no sure-fire way to get rich quickly. In fact, the pursuit of that usually leads to ruin.

When it comes to owning stocks of the best-known businesses in the world, value investors usually feel like children looking through the window of the candy store, unable to afford the treats inside because they refuse to pay the prices such high-quality franchises typically bear.

If you look at the history of technology gadget makers, hardware makers, it's littered with the corpses of Palm and RIM and companies like that.

The mark of a wise person isn't never making mistakes - everyone makes plenty of them. Rather, it's the ability to quickly admit - and fix - them!

No one would suggest completely ignoring news about your investments. Enron investors, for example, would have been well served to sell once early reports of accounting irregularities surfaced. But the key is to keep news in context and act only if further reflection or study indicates that the core thesis for an investment has changed.

Investing is a probabilistic business. Every once in a while, it's sort of like you're throwing six-sided dice, and anything except a one or a two, you're doing well. Statistically speaking, you throw the dice enough times, you're going to throw a one or a two five times in a row, and you're going to look pretty foolish, right?

One of the best places to look for value is what I call 'babies thrown out with the bathwater' - in other words, scour the most out-of-favour sectors for good companies whose stocks have been crushed due to overblown concerns about the industry that do not, in fact, have an impact on the company.

Without doubt, timely and democratic access to financial and market information contributes to smoothly functioning financial markets.

Parents are, of course, most important in shaping their children's lives, but teachers are critically important as well. Who among us doesn't look back on a few great teachers who inspired us, opened up new worlds, and helped make us who we are?

The consequences of overestimating a company and your ability to analyse it are greatly diminished when you're paying a lot less for it than your analysis shows it is worth.

Many significant stock-price inefficiencies can occur when a company is spun off.

The key thing when you short is to make sure you're not wrong on the fundamental intrinsic value.

It's critical to have a disciplined investing approach and stick with it.

The potential rewards of small-cap investing do not come without risk.

Assessing management quality is clearly one of the most important aspects of an investment decision.

To a large extent, equity investors put their hard-earned capital into the hands of management and count on it being employed skilfully and honestly. When that doesn't happen, losses typically follow.

We call ourselves 'opportunistic value investors.'

The best way I know to get rich long-term is to invest prudently and conservatively and not try and get rich quick but try and get rich slowly, basically.

I love and celebrate good teachers, and it's critical that we do more to identify them and keep them happy and motivated.

The deal machinations many companies put themselves through, while certainly a bonanza for investment bankers, can confound the typical investor.

Just because a company's future is highly uncertain doesn't mean an investment in it is risky. In fact, some of the best potential investments are highly uncertain but have little risk of permanent capital loss.