Martin Whitman Quotes

108 Martin Whitman Quotes

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There exist strong Wall Street pressures to have periodic IPO booms.
Martin Whitman

It is our thesis that minimizing risk does not reduce profit potentials for investors in common stocks; rather, minimizing the downside tends to enhance the realistic upside potential, especially for noncontrol investors in common stocks.
Martin Whitman

Much of the world is unknown and unpredictable. Thus, forecasting will always be an art.
Martin Whitman

Low profit margins can be a strong reason for purchasing a security if there are grounds for believing that they will improve. Small improvements in low profit margins can result in dramatic increases in earnings…
Martin Whitman

Don’t worry about the investments you did not make. Rather, concentrate your worries on the ones you made, but which you should not have made.
Martin Whitman

The amount of resources a management has available to create future earnings remains an essential indicator of future earning power.
Martin Whitman

In a public company, all other things being equal, there is a tendency toward more aggressiveness in striving for near-term results and less emphasis on long-range planning, especially if such long-range planning might adversely affect near-term profitability.
Martin Whitman

In a public company, there is a tendency toward making reported results as good as possible, even though it would make actual economic results worse than they ought to be.
Martin Whitman

Because it is so difficult to appraise managements, we do not believe that outside investors should, as a rule, pay premium prices to invest in the stocks of companies with superior managements. There usually are available many common stocks of good-grade companies where management is superior and where the price of the stock does not reflect that superiority.
Martin Whitman

We think all investors should avoid the securities of companies deemed to have bad managements, regardless of the price of the equity security.
Martin Whitman



Bad managements are, in our view, easier to spot than good managements. Bad managements are marked by self-dealing and/or ineptness in virtually all areas except one – protecting their own positions.
Martin Whitman

‘Bad management’… does not specifically refer to managements that do not contribute to their companies’ having favourable stock market prices.
Martin Whitman

Although it may be wise to diversify where an investor lacks know-who, there is no logical course but to concentrate in areas where the investor has know-who.
Martin Whitman

The judgment as to whether or not a management or control group is treating shareholders fairly is something that is highly subjective.
Martin Whitman

Understanding distress investing is extremely helpful to analysts deciding to focus on common stock value investing.
Martin Whitman

Probably the most striking thing about the distressed area is that so many of the operative facts in distress are 180 degrees opposite from what the conventional wisdom says the facts are, even among sophisticated professionals without any distress background.
Martin Whitman

There is no risk-reward ratio in distress investing. Rather, the lower the price, the less the risk of loss and the greater the potential for gain.
Martin Whitman

Certain investors invest only for control, or elements of control, whether those investors hold common stocks or debt instruments issued by troubled companies.
Martin Whitman

[In Distress Investing] Chapter 11 bankruptcy is not the end of the game but the beginning of the game.
Martin Whitman

Why would an investor care abut understanding the causes of financial distress? If such an understanding helps us better estimate the workout potential for different credit instruments and/or security interests in Chapter 11, then such understanding is quite important to an investor.
Martin Whitman



As long as the value of the collateral securing a creditor’s secured claim is more than adequate (oversecured) prepetition, and will not diminish in value postpetition, such a creditor or an investor in such claims should not care much about the reasons why the firm is in distress.
Martin Whitman

Companies become financially distressed when their ability to meet either their current or their future financial obligations (an impending interest payment, a principal repayment, a refinancing, insurance claims, tort claims, etc.) becomes or is expected to become materially impaired.
Martin Whitman

Lack of access to capital markets seems likely to be the principal cause of distress in 2008 and 2009.
Martin Whitman

A prepackaged bankruptcy combines the cost benefits of an out-of-court exchange offer and the statutory benefits provided by the bankruptcy code.
Martin Whitman

Finding the liquidation values of the assets of a company in distress is a needed step in assessing the likely workout potential of a credit instrument.
Martin Whitman

[In Distress Investing] Time is of the essence; time is the enemy of unsecured creditors, and the sooner a reorganization is accomplished, the larger their potential recoveries.
Martin Whitman

On Wall Street, every speculator is called an investor. This is bad semantics.
Martin Whitman

Disasters seem far less likely for value investors than for others.
Martin Whitman


Bonus

[On Martin Whitman and distress investing] Marty Whitman is the master, and has set the standard for many years.
Sam Zell



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