Mario Gabelli Quotes

102 Mario Gabelli Quotes

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When I started this firm in 1977, you couldn’t figure out what a company’s tax rate was or what its real earnings were because inflation had accelerated and made depreciation numbers hard to analyze. So I said, ‘Look, it’s very simple: If you were an informed industrialist or a very wealthy person, what would you pay for the entire company? And what will that company be worth in five, ten or 15 years?
Mario Gabelli

The ideal stock comes with a catalyst – something that will bring the public to it.
Mario Gabelli

Sometimes we buy things that involve old-fashioned judgment.
Mario Gabelli

We’re value-oriented. We’re both small-capitalization and big cap – we don’t care about a company’s size.
Mario Gabelli

[In 1994] In started my career as a broadcast analyst, and I own some TV stations personally, I think we have one of the best analytical grasps of the telephone, media and entertainment stocks. We’re very good at analyzing the movie business and prerecorded music, and very good at cable television.
Mario Gabelli

[In December 1994] I grew up in the Bronx, and when I started this company 17 years ago, I couldn’t raise $100,000.
Mario Gabelli

There are very few people around who do bottom-up research and know their companies. Plenty of people run their computers and devise income models for companies, but that’s not our culture…
Mario Gabelli

[In December 1994] If we don’t find values we like, we don’t aggressively buy things. So I don’t subscribe to the argument that we’re spread too thin. I’m doing the same amount of research today as I did in 1968… That’s half my time…
Mario Gabelli

[In March 2009] I’m an old fashioned guy… Plain old stock picking. And that is find a company that’s run by good people, and there are many of them in America, that come to work everyday to make money for their… shareholders. By giving good services and competing… There are a lot of good companies and a lot of good opportunities… That is what we do.
Mario Gabelli

Like a ‘Truffle Hound’ you kinda keep looking for good ideas… That’s what we do every day. We come to work, and the more we look the harder we work – we find interesting things.
Mario Gabelli



[In February 1999] We like to point out that 1999 will be characterized by a landscape that says valuation and volatility are the two drivers that the overall world has to look at.
Mario Gabelli

Small but dominant businesses…
Mario Gabelli

[On finding small but dominant businesses in February 1999] Even in this bull market you can find lots of these very wonderful companies.
Mario Gabelli

The stocks that we tend to buy keep going down… And the cheaper it gets, the better we are.
Mario Gabelli

We like to find good businesses and hold them.
Mario Gabelli

[In February 1999] Deals are the characteristic of the landscape for the next 12 months.
Mario Gabelli

We take a bottom’s up approach.
Mario Gabelli

One of the beauties of asset plays if properly found, is that their values will grow in line with inflation.
Mario Gabelli

What we try to do is to take advantage of opportunities by looking at companies that we like that are event driven, and generate an absolute return.
Mario Gabelli

Plodding through the mud… One step at a time, one stock at a time we find companies that we like in areas that we like.
Mario Gabelli



When think that debt is a negative if it doesn’t have the cash flow to support it or the assets. And clearly in today’s world debt is looked on as half-full. We look at it as half-full, sometimes we look on it as half-empty. It goes company by company…
Mario Gabelli

[On the US in May 2002] The strength of this country is small businesses starting and creating jobs.
Mario Gabelli

Work hard and sometimes you’ll find great stocks.
Mario Gabelli

Gene Marcial and I have something in common: We wake up every morning and go to sleep each night thinking about stocks. When you are as focused and obsessed as we are, you develop certain tenets about investing.
Mario Gabelli

There are a lot of ideas about how to make money in the stock market, some more serious than others. I always get a kick out of reading various theories that have popped up – especially some of the wackiest that assume you can predict the overall market direction.
Mario Gabelli

[On 1929 madness] During the madness of the 1929 and its aftermath, investors ‘watched the tape’ religiously. Common wisdom was that if a stock declined it should be sold, quickly. If it went up, it should be bought. In 1934 a book called Security Analysis by Graham and Dodd offered an escape from the crowd sentiment…
Mario Gabelli

By doing the research, removing the emotion from your investment decisions, focusing on your best ideas, being a long-term investor, not timing the market, and buying businesses at a discount to their intrinsic value, you will improve your chances of financial success.
Mario Gabelli

We focus on a catalyst, or event that will help surface the value in the company.
Mario Gabelli

Long-term, fundamental stock selection is the key to creating wealth or preserving it.
Mario Gabelli

Education is the great leveler.
Mario Gabelli



Quality is quality, and just because Mr Market allows you to buy a share of a company well below it’s intrinsic value, doesn’t change the underlying value.
Mario Gabelli

Look at the intrinsic value of an enterprise which doesn’t change minute by minute the way commodities change.
Mario Gabelli

[On Edwin D Walczak visiting Mario Gabelli in to ask for a job in 1983 or 1984 and making an impassioned case for stocks like Chrysler or Ford which were dismal selections he realized later] If you want to work here, you’ll have to pay me.
Mario Gabelli

When things look bleak there’s a great opportunity for everyone.
Mario Gabelli

[On the founder of Groupon] He was selling coupons on the internet. And his passion was making miniature doll houses.
Mario Gabelli

Gabelli = Value.
Mario Gabelli

[In 2006] I am as focused on my passion of earning a return for all our constituents as when we started the company in 1977. To quote from Buffett… ‘And while we are on the subject, I feel terrific.’
Mario Gabelli

[On being asked how he found analysts] I told him we hire only ‘PHDs’ – our shorthand for Poor, Hungry and Driven.
Mario Gabelli

We tend to buy what is, not what will be.
Mario Gabelli

[In March 2012 on the Facebook IPO] The social networks are not necessarily our sweet spots.
Mario Gabelli



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