Quotes: "This book traces the arc of a transformation. I started off as a Gordon Gekko wannabe - brash, shortsighted, and entirely out for myself. Then a series of transformations and self-realizations led me on a path from Benjamin Graham's
The Intelligent Investor to Ruane Cunnif to
Poor Charlie's Almanack to Robert Cialdini, then to meeting Mohnish Pabrai and lunch with Warren Buffett. That $650,100 meal had a life-changing impact on me, as you will see." pg. 1
"As I write this, I've had a cumulative return of 463 percent since founding the Aquamarine Fund in 1997, versus 167 percent for the S&P 500 index. In other words, $1 million invested in the fund would now be worth $5.63 million, versus $2.7 million if it had been invested in the S&P 500." pg. 2
"D.H. Blair's specialty was venture capital and banking. It was one of the things that had attracted me to the firm: the opportunity to be on the cutting edge, funding start-ups with new technology that would change the world." pg. 8
"The harsh reality was that companies with technologies or innovations that really worked and were certain to succeed were extremely rare - even among the crowd that got is funding from more prominent investment banks like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley." pg. 8
"There were a great many management teams that desperately wanted to pursue their dreams and that were willing to do and say pretty much anything if it meant getting funding." pg. 8
"On one memorable occasion I was called into a meeting between the bank and an outfit looking to raise money for a cold fusion venture. Having studied the materials and read up a little on the background, I blurted out, "But the science just doesn't make sense!" pg. 9
"Our tiny team of bankers constituted the acceptable, respectable face of the company, while the brokers were the backroom boys, touting these dubious deals to unsophisticated retail investors. They were chllingly reminiscent of the brokers in Martin Scorsese's movies The Wolf of Wall Street, which was exaggerrated but not misleading." pg. 11