Steven Romick Quotes

104 Steven Romick Quotes

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[In September 2008.] Governments, like corporations, that have bad balance sheets have higher borrowing costs, and higher long-term interest rates will likely result.
Steven Romick

[In September 2008.] History has shown that governments are not good managers of businesses and that governments can be like pit bulls when they sink their teeth into an industry. Better that they don’t bite at all, rather than to have to learn to wriggle free from their locked jaws.
Steven Romick

[In September 2008.] As much as it is our nature to buy when others are selling and as much as we detest the sound of those calling ‘it’s different this time,’ we do feel that the unknown at this time dictates that we maintain a cautious stance in our clients’ portfolios.
Steven Romick

[In November 2008.] The reason we're in this mess is that financial institutions tried to make money without any regard to the concept of risk.
Steven Romick

I‘d never seen anyone wear silk paisley pajamas in the middle of the day before, but it was
John Templeton.
Steven Romick

I spent a lot of time looking at high-yield bonds and some distressed debt in the late 80‘s, and I got a flavor for it.
Steven Romick

I wanted to just focus on investing.
Steven Romick

[In 2010.] You can protect against certain types of risk, not just by hedging your portfolio, but by choosing to buy certain types of companies versus others.
Steven Romick

[In 2010.] I believe that P/Es on any levered business, all things equal, should be less. What‘s more leveraged than a bank?
Steven Romick

[In 2010.] At the end of the day, we‘re worry warts. As a byproduct of our strategy, we end up with cash and we end up lagging in up markets, but outperforming in down markets.
Steven Romick



[In 2010.] People are emotional and they make visceral decisions. Such decisions end up manifesting themselves in volatility, where things are oversold and overbought.
Steven Romick

[In 2010.] Being a really good investment manager is equal parts being a financial analyst, business analyst, and psychologist with conviction to act when others are panicking.
Steven Romick

[In 2010.] We‘re looking for companies with strong cash flow characteristics and returns on capital…
Steven Romick

[In 2010.] Beating the market is not our goal. Our goal is to provide, over the long term, equity-like returns with less risk than the stock market. We have beaten the market, but that‘s incidental.
Steven Romick

[In 2010.] We are absolute value investors.
Steven Romick

[In 2010.] We take our role as guardians of our clients‘ capital quite seriously. If we felt the need to be fully invested at all times, then we would have to accept more risk than I think we need to.
Steven Romick

[In 2010.] I‘d like FPA to be known as respected value investors. I‘m very careful in stating ‘value investors‘ and not ‘value investment firm‘ because our money is invested alongside our clients.
Steven Romick

[In 2010.] We don‘t have a crystal ball and don‘t believe that we understand the economic picture better than everyone else.
Steven Romick

[In 2010.] The U.S. economy is currently so jacked up on steroids that you can‘t really understand the data until the meds wear off.
Steven Romick

[In 2010.] This is the second deepest downturn of the last 100 years and the rebound coming out of that contraction has been rather muted.
Steven Romick



[In 2010.] We shy away from companies that are serial acquirers until the deals are largely behind them and a strong operating executive comes to help the company realize its potential.
Steven Romick

[In 2010.] We do not mind a company making acquisitions periodically, we just do not want them to have an addiction.
Steven Romick

[In 2010.] We are going to different banks that were originators of sub-prime and Alt-A loans back in 2005-2007 and buying these loans at roughly forty-three cents on the dollar, of the unpaid principal balance, or roughly a 65% or so discount to the original estimate of appraised value when the loan was underwritten
Steven Romick

[In 2010.] The biggest lesson I ever learned from Bob [Robert Rodriquez] is to prepare for the worst and hope for the best.
Steven Romick

[In 2010.] I think you have to patiently wait for the opportunity.
Steven Romick

[In May 2011.] Although I never really know what is coming down the road, we usually find gratification uncovering investments amidst the rubble of the abandoned…
Steven Romick

[In May 2011.] The pain of ‘08 seems to have been forgotten in ‘11, leaving anxious complacency in its place. An oxymoron though it may be, it won‘t be the first time that people act one way, despite feeling another. Some investors may prefer safety, but when faced with paltry cash yields, they quickly embrace riskier alternatives.
Steven Romick

[In May 2011.] I have less faith that people who couldn‘t see a bubble forming and didn‘t observe it when it was here, can ameliorate the situation, and then prevent another bubble.
Steven Romick

[In May 2011.] A refrain oft used at FPA is that, - ‘sometimes returns are generated not by what you own, but by what you don‘t.’
Steven Romick

[In May 2011.] If you listen to Wall Street, there‘s always opportunity. But if that‘s the case, why do most fail in their mission?
Steven Romick



[In May 2011.] Let thoughtfulness and patience be your guide to achieving your long-term goals and don‘t allow yourself to be swayed by either the quick buck or short-term market movements.
Steven Romick

[In July 2011.] Sometimes the solution you use ends up just being a band-aid, and sometimes the medicine you're taking can actually cause another illness. I mean, you try and kill cancer cells with chemotherapy, and chemotherapy taken to its extreme can certainly kill you. So when you look at the financial crisis, we have just doped up the system to such a great degree, how it’s going to come back and bite us in the butt is our big concern.
Steven Romick

[In July 2011.] One of the myths about small cap stocks is that they grow faster than large cap. And they certainly can, because these companies are more nimble, but that isn’t necessarily the case.
Steven Romick

[In July 2011.] We look for areas where we can get the wind at our back… We're trying to avoid the value traps. We want to try and find those industries that offer us growth opportunities, and which may not be entirely understood by the marketplace.
Steven Romick

[In July 2011.] We’ve actually done pretty well carrying a big cash load over the last 17 years.
Steven Romick

[In July 2011.] I feel that by having cash, it gives us a chance to buy something tomorrow when it’s down. So I think actually people view it as a pessimist approach. I actually look at it as an optimist, like hey, something good is going to happen. It’s going to go down, and we're going to be able to put that capital to work.
Steven Romick

[In July 2011.] We're patient when we own a company and we make the investment, waiting for it to work out as long as we continue to validate the reason that we own it along the way…
Steven Romick

[In July 2011.] Volatility is a silly measure of risk to me, but it’s actually a very accurate measure of risk for most people, because people get scared into stocks and get scared out of stocks, get scared into mutual funds and get scared out of mutual funds.
Steven Romick

[In August 2011.] We are a three-quarters step forward, half-a-step back kind of manager. To do well over the long term, you have got to be okay underperforming for periods.
Steven Romick

[In August 2011.] We've been buyers of stocks in the last couple of weeks.
Steven Romick



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