Peter Cundill Quotes
101 Peter Cundill Quotes
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[In June 2003 on not wanting to quit at the age of 64] The real joy is that it changes every day. If you can keep your curiosity, you can keep going.
Peter Cundill
I’m the oversight person. I could pick up any single portfolio if anyone left.
Peter Cundill
[In June 2003] Every market has values. But there are still a lot of U.S. companies trading at prices well above 14 times earnings. We don’t have too many U.S.
Peter Cundill
[On the U.S. dollar being worth $1.05 Canadian in 1974] We had the advantage of investing with overvalued Canadian dollars in an extraordinary number of U.S. bargains.
Peter Cundill
[In June 2003] Exchange rate movements play a major role at inflection points. The weakness of the U.S. dollar and the strengthening of the Canadian dollar is the most important theme for Canadians now.
Peter Cundill
[In June 2003] I said why buy Nortel at $72 when you can buy Brascan at $18? No one was listening.
Peter Cundill
[In June 2003 on buying bonds from troubled companies that may be converted into equity in a restructuring.] Distressed debt is on wheels. This area has served us well and continues to do so.
Peter Cundill
[In June 2003 on whether he may be interested in buying the bonds of Air Canada then in bankruptcy.] We’re waiting to see if there’s a margin of safety.
Peter Cundill
[In June 2003 on why after three decades in the investment business he wants to keep going as long as possible.] You’ve got to like absorbing information. And you need some skill in putting disparate pieces of information together into some kind of whole.
Peter Cundill
[In June 2003 on remembering everything goes in cycles.] Remembering that the Canadian dollar has been high before gives you some kind of proportion.
Peter Cundill
[In June 2003] This is certainly a business that allows one extraordinary freedom and travel. It’s given me quite a balanced life.
Peter Cundill
[In December 2003] Buy lows, not highs.
Peter Cundill
[In December 2003] Look at the balance sheet for guidance in the first place and see what the book values are.
Peter Cundill
[In December 2003] See if there are extra assets.
Peter Cundill
[In December 2003] Be wary of intangible assets on the balance sheet.
Peter Cundill
[In December 2003] Look for dividend yield and a low price-to-earnings ratio.
Peter Cundill
[In December 2003] Don't pay much for growth.
Peter Cundill
[In December 2003] There's nothing worse than buying a balance sheet that's pristine and the operating results begin to go bad on you, because then your margin of safety quickly gets taken away…
Peter Cundill
[In December 2003 on Sibir Energy] On a value basis, it's cheap by any metric, but this is Russia. You're carting country risk along with you.
Peter Cundill
[On Benjamin Graham, Warren Buffett and ‘the margin of safety’] It struck me like a thunderbolt – there before me in plains terms was the method, the solid theoretical back-up to selecting investments based on the principle of realizable underlying value.
Peter Cundill
I think that intelligent forecasting (company revenues, earnings, etc.) should not seek to predict what will in fact happen in the future. Its purpose ought to be to illuminate the road, to point out obstacles and potential pitfalls and so assist management to tailor events and to bend them in a desired direction.
Peter Cundill
I believe that there is probably one opportunity in every man’s life which demands his knowledge, his guts, his self-esteem, and his judgement. If he seizes it with both hands and it is successful, he joins the first rank, if not he remains a mortal with feet of clay.
Peter Cundill
I am conservative by nature.
Peter Cundill
The essential concept is to buy under-valued, unrecognised, neglected, out of fashion, or misunderstood situations where inherent value, a margin of safety, and the possibility of sharply changing conditions created new and favourable investment opportunities.
Peter Cundill
I will never use inside information or seek it out. I do implicitly believe in Sir Sigmund Warburg’s adage, ‘All you get from inside information is a whiff of bad breath.’
Peter Cundill
Value in an investment is similar to character in an individual – it stands up better in adversity…
Peter Cundill
Learn the lessons and then forget about it.
Peter Cundill
[On being asked – Why he was buying a stock.] I’m buying your stock because it’s cheap and for no other reason.
Peter Cundill
I believe that routines can actually be a support, rendering the imaginative process more effective in action – preventing the kind of superfluity of ideas that promotes dithering and constipates action.
Peter Cundill
On the subject of the ‘fallen angels’ of stock markets that occupy so much of our detective work as value investors, I try to keep in mind Oscar Wilde’s comment that ‘saints always have a past and sinners always have a future,’ so no investment should be rules out simply on the basis of past history. We focus on liquidation analysis and liquidation analysis alone.
Peter Cundill
[In early 1992] Markets can be overvalued and still keep on getting more expensive for quite a while, or they can be undervalued and keep getting cheaper, which is why investing is an art form and not an exact science.
Peter Cundill
Last night I was anticipating the outcome of the Japanese stock market. I dreamt that the Nikkei fell by a thousand points. In fact it was up 1,450 – the second best day in it’s history. You must stop this short term anticipation stuff. If you’ve done the numbers and are satisfied with them and the principle is right, you just have to grit your teeth and be patient.
Peter Cundill
[On Accounting] Accounting is nothing more than a language. There are two parts to this process: making statements and interpreting them.
Peter Cundill
I know how you can tell fibs in a balance sheet…
Peter Cundill
The investment business is organic, based on a mix of financials, politics, human greed, and a huge dose of sentiment – not forgetting the urge to outdo the competition.
Peter Cundill
Sir John Templeton said something to me and it stuck in my mind and I didn’t do anything about it at the time. We were on a roll of fifteen years of wonderful results, no down years, a high compound rate of return and some money coming in. He said something which I think is correct, and that [Benjamin] Graham also talks about; ‘always change a winning game.’ I didn’t do it because I was on a roll then and I wasn’t flexible enough.
Peter Cundill
There is no investment rule that remains immutable except the margin of safety. There are always breaks and the trick is to begin to anticipate, if you can, where the break points will be and shift. Not the disciplines and not the framework but the tactics that are involved.
Peter Cundill
There’s almost too much information now. It boggles most shareholders and a lot of analysts.
Peter Cundill
Doing the analysis yourself gives you confidence buying securities when a lot of the external factors are negative. It gives you something to hang your hat on.
Peter Cundill
I’d prefer not to know what the analysts think or to hear any inside information. It cloud’s one’s judgment – I’d rather be dispassionate.
Peter Cundill
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