Financial Valuation Quotes

I used to think that good short-sellers could be trained like long-focused value investors because it should be the same skill set; you’re tearing into the numbers, you’re valuing the businesses, you’re assigning a consolidated value, and hopefully you’re seeing something the market doesn’t see.But now I’ve learned that there’s a big difference between a long-focused value investor and a good short-seller. That difference is psychological and I think it falls into the realm of behavioral finance.

For price is everywhere regulated by the return obtained by this last portion of capital, for which no rent whatever is paid.

Money values do not simply mirror the state of affairs in the real world; valuation is a positive act that makes an impact on the course of events. Monetary and real phenomena are connected in a reflexive fashion; that is, they influence each other mutually. The reflexive relationship manifests itself most clearly in the use and abuse of credit.

OK, so here's the deal. First of all, "The Wall Street Journal" was bought for $5 billion. It's now worth $500 million, OK. They don't have to tell me what to do. "The Wall Street Journal" has been wrong so many different times about so many different things. I am all for free trade, but it's got to be fair. When Ford moves their massive plant to Mexico, we get nothing. We lose all of these jobs.

There's a company behind every stock and a reason companies - and their stocks - perform the way they do.

Derivative trading with mark-to-market accounting degenerates into mark-to-model. Two firms make a big derivative trade and the accountants on both sides show a large profit from the same trade.

I went public in 2002 in America, and do you know what Wall Street valued my concession in Macau at? Zero.

Mediobanca is undervalued but less undervalued than other banks.

I don't know whether you have done your calculations but, about two or three years back, I did a first assessment of what the first successful device would be worth and it came out at about 300 trillion dollars.

Intrinsic value can be defined simply: It is the discounted value of the cash that can be taken out of a business during its remaining life.

I believe companies like ours are going to be as large as media companies and social networking companies that are valued in the tens of billions of dollars.

You know what somebody else's fundraise metrics are to you? Irrelevant. You know what your own last round post was? Irrelevant. Yes, I know, not legally, because of those pesky rights and preferences. But emotionally, trust me: it is irrelevant now. We even have a name for this - valuation nostalgia.

In one way, I'm sympathetic to the institutional reluctance to face the music. I'd give a lot to mark my weight to 'model' rather than to 'market.'

The real challenge was to model all the interest rates simultaneously, so you could value something that depended not only on the three-month interest rate, but on other interest rates as well.

For most businesses, America is the most important asset on their balance sheet.

The dominant factors affecting control valuations are earning power (past and prospective) and asset values.