Jean Marie Eveillard Quotes
102 Jean Marie Eveillard Quotes (Jean-Marie Eveillard, First Eagle Funds, First Eagle Global Fund)
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[Near the peak of the dotcom boom on being told by a top Societe Generale executive, the date the funds he managed would have no more money invested based on redemptions continuing at the rate at the time.] I would rather lose half my shareholders than lose half my shareholders’ money.
Jean Marie Eveillard
It’s warmer inside the herd… it can be very cold outside of it.
Jean Marie Eveillard
[In September 1991.] I have a great belief that everything is cyclical in life, particularly in the investment world.
Jean Marie Eveillard
[In 2012] There is nothing wrong with making money through simple investment ideas. After all, that’s what Warren Buffett has done for years.
Jean Marie Eveillard
[In 2012] Sometimes in life, it’s not just about what we buy, but what we don’t buy.
Jean Marie Eveillard
[In December 2007.] To me, value investing is a big tent that accommodates many different people.
Jean Marie Eveillard
[In December 2007.] There are very few value investors that get involved in shorting because if you are a value investor, you are a long term investor. If you are a long term investor, you don’t have to worry about market psychology.
Jean Marie Eveillard
[In December 2007.] By definition there are two characteristics to borrowing. Number one: borrowing works both ways. So you are compromising the idea of margin of safety if you borrow. Number two: borrowing reduces your staying power. As I said, if you are a value investor, you are a long term investor, so you want to have staying power.
Jean Marie Eveillard
[In December 2007.] We invest, if in the end… we think we understand the business, we think we like the business and we think the investors are mis-pricing the business.
Jean Marie Eveillard
[In December 2007.] Not only does value investing make sense… but it works.
Jean Marie Eveillard
[In December 2007.] Everything in life that is worthwhile comes hard.
Jean Marie Eveillard
[In September 2008.] We value investors play the game of bridge and the others play poker. The big difference is that there is much less luck in bridge than in poker. I think the secret of success of most value investors is that when times became difficult they stuck to their guns and did not capitulate.
Jean Marie Eveillard
[In September 1991.] When an emerging market becomes fashionable, it appreciates sharply because of foreign money pouring in, and when the foreign money exits, the local market is not deep enough to absorb the selling pressure.
Jean Marie Eveillard
[In September 1991.] A value investor doesn't need to be constantly in touch with every security in every market in the world.
Jean Marie Eveillard
[In November 2000.] An investor who buys a building or an entire corporation gives a great deal of attention to the price to be paid for the asset. So does the buyer of a car or even a bathing suit. They all seek value. What's so different with equities? Are they just pieces of paper to be traded in and out of on the basis of psychology, sentiment, herd instinct? Doesn't financial history teach any lessons? After all, many individuals' savings have been repeatedly wiped out-yes, wiped out-in the past half-century of economic expansion, most recently with Internet stocks. My point here is that both closet indexing and shooting for the stars are exposing financial planners' clients to undue risk. Both are a result of benchmark tyranny.
Jean Marie Eveillard
[In November 2000.] Meeting or beating their benchmarks occupies the minds of most fund managers today-to the ultimate detriment, I believe, of the clients' best interests. At times, it is hard, even impossible, to show clients where their best interests lie. But planners should be aware that, when the tide turns (as it will), tons of ‘serious money’ may be lost-and you can bet your clients won't thank you for that.
Jean Marie Eveillard
[In October 2001.] The market was good for 20 years, it has been bad for 18 months. If it has been good for 20 years, it can be bad for longer than 18 months. And so if anything, September 11 has given us the idea that we should insist more than ever on what Ben Graham called the margin of safety.
Jean Marie Eveillard
[In October 2001.] When I look back over the past seven years, either too much money was coming too fast, or too much money was leaving too fast. When a lot of money was coming, we simply were not coming up with enough investment ideas to use up the cash, so the cash built up and we were criticized on the notion that we are not being paid to hold cash, which I think is a silly statement. We are being paid, I presume, to protect capital and, if possible, to make it grow. The fact that cash had built up was not a matter of us trying to time the market. We were pricing securities, which is altogether very different. So we have found reasonable values, but there is no denying the values today, even with the U.S. and European markets down about 30%-35% over the past 18 months, are nowhere near as good as they were in 1973-74. Nor are they as good as they were in 1980-81.
Jean Marie Eveillard
[In October 2001.] Value investors tend to be patient. If I buy a stock at 15 and four-and-a-half years later it is still at 15 and then in the following six months it goes to 30, the value investor does not say, I wasted my time for four-and-a-half years. He or she says, hey, I doubled my money in five years. I don't care whether it happened smoothly or all of a sudden, I doubled my money in five years.
Jean Marie Eveillard
[In November 2002.] We are very patient.
Jean Marie Eveillard
[In November 2002.] People say derivatives reduce risk. They don't. They just spread the risk.
Jean Marie Eveillard
[In November 2002.] My attitude is that [Federal Reserve Chairman Alan] Greenspan financed the stock-market bubble, because there can be no bubble unless it's financed by the central bank. Now he's financed a real-estate bubble. The first bubble has burst. If the second, the real-estate bubble, bursts, then what does he do? Within the next year or two, either Greenspan will maintain his status, or he will be seen as the worst Fed chief since 1913, when the Fed was created.
Jean Marie Eveillard
[In 2003.] We didn’t own any new economy stocks on the way up and we didn’t own them on the way down.
Jean Marie Eveillard
[In April 2004.] We don't invest in Chinese companies, because we don't trust the accounting. But there's no question that China is becoming the manufacturing center of the world.
Jean Marie Eveillard
[In April 2004.] We try to determine what a knowledgeable buyer expecting a reasonable return would be willing to pay today, in cash, for the entire business. Our approach requires us to understand the business - its strengths and weaknesses - rather than just the numbers. As investors have learned, the numbers can't always be trusted.
Jean Marie Eveillard
[In October 2004.] I had never read [Benjamin] Graham before because we didn’t read him in Europe. Suddenly, investing made much more sense to me.
Jean Marie Eveillard
[In October 2004 on the dotcom boom.] We were used to lagging now and then, but this cycle was deeper and longer than any other. It was relentless, and people said value [investing] is dead; you’re obsolete. It took its toll personally.
Jean Marie Eveillard
[In October 2004.] The mutual-fund industry has become dominated by marketing people. [During the tech mania] Some gave in to the temptation to stop being a fiduciary of customers’ assets and started becoming asset-gathering machines.
Jean Marie Eveillard
[In October 2004.] When I'm in a good mood, I say Wall Street is nothing but a big promotional machine. When I'm not in a good mood, I say it's a den of thieves.
Jean Marie Eveillard
[In June 2007.] One thing about Americans – something I think is very positive – is there’s this idea that God did not put us on this earth to do nothing. No matter your age. Whereas Europeans believe that once you retire, there is nothing wrong with doing nothing.
Jean Marie Eveillard
[In June 2007.] The stock market in the U.S. and outside the U.S. has been going up for four years, which usually does not present investors with a great many new opportunities. To paraphrase Ben Graham, the markets seem high, they are high, and they are as high as they seem.
Jean Marie Eveillard
[In June 2007.] Contrary to many mutual fund managers, we do not believe we have to be fully invested 100% of the time.
Jean Marie Eveillard
[In June 2007.] No, we're not looking at homebuilding stocks. I think there was a housing bubble, and as a consequence of the subprime meltdown, I think that housing is not about to recover anytime soon.
Jean Marie Eveillard
[In June 2007.] I think the next question for private equity and hedge funds is going to be, ‘Where are the customers' yachts?’
Jean Marie Eveillard
[In June 2007.] I think gold moves up and down based on investment demand mostly.
Jean Marie Eveillard
[In September 2007.] We have been faced since August with the so-called sub-prime housing problem, which is financial crisis no. 6 in only twenty years. No. 1 was the October 1987 crash, No. 2 the real estate debacle of 1990, No. 3 the Mexican devaluation of late 1994, No. 4 the Asian and then Russian crises of 1997-98 culminating in the Long Term Capital Management hedge fund collapse, No. 5 the bursting of the technology-media-telecom bubble in the spring of 2000.
Jean Marie Eveillard
[In December 2007.] There is a story in France about a famous French poet named Paul Claudel who had not believed in God. One day, he was standing by a pillar at a Cathedral near Paris and he said: ‘I was illuminated by faith.’ In a sense, I was illuminated not by faith, but all of a sudden it seemed to me that Ben Graham simply made sense. The idea of margin of safety, the idea of intrinsic value, the idea of Mr. Market, the very humble idea that the future is uncertain – it made sense to me.
Jean Marie Eveillard
[In December 2007.] Neither in New York, nor when I went back to Paris for a few years, could I convince anybody to look at value investing. Still today to my knowledge, the French banks and institutions do not have value investing. Societe Generale sold our operation to Arnhold and S. Bleichroeder at the end of 1999, and I’ve kept in touch with some of the people there. I have tried to convince them over the past seven years that they should make some room somewhere in a little corner for value investing, but they are not into it.
Jean Marie Eveillard
[In December 2007.] Today in Paris there are a few people practicing value investing. Twenty years ago, there was nobody to my knowledge, but I think today there are a few independent shops that tend to do value investing.
Jean Marie Eveillard
[In December 2007.] Value investing is a big tent that accommodates many different people. At one end of the tent there is Ben Graham, and at the other end of the tent there is Warren Buffett, who worked with Graham and then went out on his own and made adjustments to the teachings of Ben Graham.
Jean Marie Eveillard
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