Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful.
The intelligent investor is a realist who sells to optimists and buys from pessimists.
The worse a situation becomes, the less it takes to turn it around.
Markets are constantly in a state of uncertainty and flux. Money is made by discounting the obvious and betting on the unexpected.
My natural state is an outsider. I've always been an outsider.
The best opportunities arise when the market gets a fact wrong.
Being too far ahead of your time is indistinguishable from being wrong.
The market has a tendency to go to extremes in both directions. Your job is to profit from that tendency, not participate in it.
The most contrarian thing you can do in venture is invest in something that sounds crazy. If it sounds reasonable, someone else already did it.
I got fired from Facebook after two weeks for telling them their user metrics were misleading. They went on to become one of the most valuable companies in the world. I went on to bet on Bitcoin.
The best time to buy a stock is when everyone is panicking about it and the financials say they're wrong.
The best time to buy is when there's blood in the streets, including your own.
Every great investment I ever made seemed crazy at the time I made it.
Twitter was this weird little thing that nobody at Google took seriously. I couldn't stop buying it.
Every billion-dollar company looked like a terrible idea at the beginning. That's the point.
Question everything the consensus tells you about money. Especially the people printing it.
American investors ignore international markets. That's where some of the best opportunities are hiding.
Every other corporate card wants you to spend more. We want you to spend less. That's either the dumbest business model ever or the smartest.
The most contrarian thing of all is not to oppose the crowd but to think for yourself.
I've never been afraid to be in the minority. If everyone agrees with you, you're probably not going to make much money.
Silicon Valley has this myth that working on defense is somehow dirty. Meanwhile, the people who think that are living under the protection of the things they refuse to build.
If you don't believe in Bitcoin, that's fine. But the people who figured out the internet early didn't wait for consensus either.
I don't come from chip design. I come from building companies. The chip designers told me a wafer-scale chip was impossible. I asked why. Nobody had a good answer.
Moore's Law said chips get smaller. We said: what if they get bigger? Everyone laughed. Then they saw the benchmark results.
Jack Ma taught me one thing that changed my life — the best time to attack is when everyone else is retreating. I bought BitTorrent during a bear market. I bought into Huobi when everyone was running from exchanges.
When I started building in Jersey City, people thought I was out of my mind. Thirty years later, those same people are paying $4,000 a month to live in my buildings.
I started Starwood Capital with $20 million during the savings-and-loan crisis. Everyone was running away from real estate. I was running toward it with a shopping cart.
We bought Hilton for $26 billion right before the world ended. Everyone said we were idiots. We made $14 billion in profit. The best deals are always the ones that feel the worst when you do them.
We built Datadog in New York, not San Francisco. Everyone told us that DevOps companies had to be in the Bay Area. Turns out infrastructure does not care where you write the code.
When Citibank was on its knees and everyone was running for the exits, I walked in with $590 million. The best time to invest is when everyone else is too scared to.
Everyone wants to build the next Uber. Nobody wants to buy the HVAC company that's been profitable for 20 years. That's why the HVAC company is a better deal — no competition for it.
The biggest opportunity in investing is always in the parts of the market that nobody finds exciting.
The best deals are the ones that make everyone else nervous. If a deal is comfortable, you are probably overpaying.
Continental Airlines was bankrupt, broken, and everyone said it was hopeless. We bought it for $66 million. It became the most profitable airline in America.
I like investments that are complicated. Complicated means fewer bidders. Fewer bidders means better prices.
The best time to buy real assets is when everyone is selling them. We did our best deals in 2008 and 2020.
We bought credit default swaps when everybody thought we were crazy. The $340 million premium was the best insurance policy we ever wrote.
Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful. But put real money behind it, not just bumper stickers.
The best time to buy is when everyone else is selling in panic. The worst time to buy is when everyone else is buying in euphoria. This is obvious and almost nobody does it.
Memphis is a long way from Wall Street, and that's exactly where I want to be. The herd can't trample you if you're not running with it.
Everybody was wrong. There is no divine law that says there can only be three television networks.
We are not contrarian for the sake of being contrarian. We are contrarian because the best values are found where others are not looking.
The time to buy is when there is blood in the streets. Even if it is your own blood.
I look for companies that are hated and misunderstood. That is where the biggest discounts are.
When we started Snapchat everyone said disappearing messages was the dumbest idea they had ever heard. Good.
Everyone told me Blinkit was a bad deal. Blinkit is now our fastest growing business. Sometimes you have to trust your own analysis.
I made 52 percent in 2008 while the world was ending. That year taught me that being right and being popular are never the same thing.
Every manufacturer rejected my design because vacuum bags were a 500 million dollar industry. Nobody wanted to kill it.
I predicted Trump would win in 2016 when everyone said it was impossible. I was reading the data. They were reading Twitter.
I do not follow consensus. Consensus is the average of everyone else's wrong opinions.
Launching during a crypto winter was not ideal. But the best companies are built when everyone else is leaving.
Europe called me a barbarian at the gate. I called them inefficient. History shows who was right.
When I invested in Starbucks in the hood everyone said it would not work. Those stores outperformed the national average.
The best emerging market investments are made when everyone is leaving the country. I have made a career of arriving when others are departing.
Doing what everybody else is doing at the same time that everybody else is doing it is a formula for disaster.
If you want to have a better performance than the crowd, you must do things differently from the crowd.
It is impossible to produce superior performance unless you do something different from the majority.
Reinvesting when terrified is the best time to invest. Every great investor knows this. Very few can do it.
The time of maximum pessimism is the best time to buy, and the time of maximum optimism is the best time to sell.
If everybody is doing it one way, there's a good chance you can find your niche by going in exactly the opposite direction.
The best time to invest in a paradigm shift is when most people think it's stupid.
The biggest returns come from the biggest messes. Clean companies trade at premium prices.
When everyone is panicking, look at what the data actually says. Usually it says buy.
The best time to buy is when nobody else wants to buy. I've made my fortune buying in downturns.
I made my fortune buying what other people were selling, and selling what other people were buying.
The best venture investments are the ones that everybody else thinks are terrible ideas.
The smartest strategy is the one your competitors think is stupid — until it works.
The EV-only future is wrong. The world needs hybrids, hydrogen, and batteries — all of them.
If something sounds crazy but the physics works, it's probably going to happen.
I've made more money buying things nobody wanted than buying things everybody wanted.
We invested when Bitcoin was $65. Everyone said we were crazy. We said they were early.
The best startup ideas are the ones that sound bad at first. If everyone agrees, the opportunity is already gone.
Everyone told us we were crazy to start a bank in Brazil. Five banks controlled everything. But that's exactly why the opportunity existed.
Everyone was fighting over Manhattan. We went to the suburbs. Turns out, that's where America actually lives.
Everyone said buying UFC for $4 billion was insane. The UFC is now worth $12 billion. I love being called insane.
I buy what the big companies don't want. They think they're selling liabilities. I know I'm buying assets.
Everyone said the music industry was dead. I saw an industry with incredible content and a broken distribution model. Streaming fixed the distribution.
The best investments are in things that people think are finished. They rarely are.
Carvana at $4 was the most obvious opportunity I've seen in years. The business was improving. The market was pricing in bankruptcy.
I've always been a contrarian. The problem with being a contrarian is that sometimes the crowd is right and you're the fool.
I made 50% in 2008 by shorting banks everyone said were safe. The consensus was wrong. It usually is.
When everyone is buying, I want to know what they're not seeing. When everyone is selling, I want to know what they're missing.
When the on-chain data says accumulation and the price says panic — buy. The data is smarter than the crowd.
I buy what the big tech companies throw away. Their garbage is my goldmine.
Everyone said Africa was too poor for mobile phones. 100 million subscribers later, I think the market disagreed.
Startups that solve for the top 10% of users always look stupid at first. That is the point.
Commodity cycles are brutal. The people who survive them — and win — are the ones who buy when everyone is selling.
Build the boring category that everyone needs but nobody wants to fund. That is where the best businesses in India have been built.
I am not trying to win a popularity contest. I am trying to run a business. Those are different objectives.
Every brand we've bought, people said it was dead. They said Sports Direct was dead once. They were wrong then too.
Singapore told me to be a lawyer. Silicon Valley told me gaming hardware was boring. Razer's market cap told both of them the answer.
If you want to succeed you should strike out on new paths, rather than travel the worn paths of accepted success.
The London Whale wasn’t a mystery. The positions were so large they were distorting the market. You just had to be willing to stand on the other side.
At Farallon, I learned that the best investments are in crisis situations where everyone else is running away.
The best investments are the ones that make you slightly uncomfortable. Comfort means the price is too high.
Most VCs passed on WhatsApp because it had no revenue. They were looking at the wrong spreadsheet.
I backed SpaceX because Elon wasn’t building a company. He was building the future. You don’t model that in a spreadsheet.
The best opportunities in venture capital are in industries that VCs consider boring. Boring is where the money is.
If a company’s thesis doesn’t sound a little crazy, it probably isn’t big enough.
Most VCs invest in software because it’s comfortable. The biggest returns come from the uncomfortable stuff — curing cancer, going to space.
I buy during crises because that is when real assets go on sale. The 1995 peso crash was the best investment opportunity of my lifetime.
When there is a crisis, that is when you invest. When everyone is afraid, that is when the opportunities are greatest.
The best investments always look dumb at first. If everyone agrees it is smart, you are already too late.
Regulated industries scare most investors. That is exactly why the returns are so good.
Buy when others are selling. The best brands in the world occasionally go on sale. You just have to be ready.
I started Mindbody in San Luis Obispo because that's where I lived. Everyone said I needed to be in Silicon Valley. Twenty years later, we're still in SLO.
I just love it when people say I can't do something. There's nothing that makes me feel better because all my life people have said I wasn't going to make it.
When I see a good thing going cheap because nobody wants it, I buy a lot of it.
The richest opportunities are in boring, essential industries that ambitious people overlook.
The best investments are the ones that sophisticated investors have given up on.
The time to buy is when there is blood in the streets, even if some of it is your own.
The best time to buy an airport is when nobody wants to fly. The planes always come back.
The best time to buy a ship is when shipping companies are selling theirs for scrap.
When others left Nigeria in the 1980s and 1990s, we stayed. That is why we are where we are today.
In commodities, the best time to buy is when nobody wants to. The worst time to buy is when everyone does.
The only way to achieve returns meaningfully different from the market is to make investments meaningfully different from the market.
Buying shares when they are out of favour and selling them when they become popular is simple to describe but requires discipline and patience to practise.
Distressed investing is not about buying garbage. It's about buying assets that the market has mispriced because the situation looks messy. Messy does not mean worthless.
I have seen many booms and busts. The lesson is always the same: prices always come back to value.
The best deals I have ever made were in markets that other people thought were too risky to enter.
When we started in Powai, people thought we were mad. They said nobody would live there. We said: build the right township and they will come. They came.
Everyone told me it couldn't be done. I just did not believe them. That is the only edge I have ever had.
The best venture investments happen before there is any consensus. By the time everyone agrees a company is interesting, it is too late.
I believe in places. I believe that cities have trajectories, and if you identify where a city is going before everyone else does, and you're patient, you win.
The circus was supposed to be dead. Everybody said so. But nobody stopped to ask whether the circus had just been done wrong for fifty years.
I have spent my career acquiring brands that the market undervalues. I am very good at knowing the difference between a brand that is broken and a brand that is merely out of fashion.
I got the Tommy Hilfiger rights in Canada when nobody wanted them. That is the business. You buy what others ignore.
Most great businesses look like bad ideas right up until they don't.
The stock market is inherently misleading. Doing what everybody else is doing can often be wrong.
A lot of the biggest apps looked like toys or fads when we first funded them.
We built crypto and blockchain into SBI while the big banks were still calling it a scam.
You need to be greedy when everyone is careful. We did 10 times more investments in 2022, when a lot of people were not investing anything.
Being early means being alone and uncomfortable for a long time. That is where the returns are.
To the extent you find yourself in a position to deploy a lot of your fund in a market that's actually underheated or overly pessimistic relative to progress being made, that's a really nice time to be able to invest.
The institutions aren't coming. DeFi has to be built for the people who are already here.