If you are going to be a great investor, you have to fit the style to who you are.
Michael BurryRead
The borrowers will always be willing to take a great deal for themselves. It’s up to the lenders to show restraint, and when they lose it, watch out.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the imbalance in borrowing and lending relationships, emphasizing the lenders' responsibility to practice restraint.
Michael Burry's quote draws attention to the nature of financial transactions, where borrowers often seek to maximize their gains at the expense of lenders. It suggests that while borrowers are willing to take as much as they can, it is crucial for lenders to maintain self-control; failure to do so can lead to significant consequences, indicating a cautionary stance on lending practices.
In practice
In a finance seminar discussing responsible lending practices.
If you are going to be a great investor, you have to fit the style to who you are.
What you want to watch are the lenders, not the borrowers. The borrowers will always be willing to take a great deal for themselves. It's up to the lenders to show restraint, and when they lose it, watch out.
Gold is a way of going long on fear, and it has been a pretty good way of going long on fear from time to time. But you really have to hope people become more afraid in a year or two years than they are now. And if they become more afraid you make money, if they become less afraid you lose money, but the gold itself doesn’t produce anything.
Net return is simply the gross return of your investment portfolio less the costs you incur. Keep your investment expenses low, for the tyranny of compounding costs can devastate the miracle of compounding returns.
If you make time each month to give your money some attention, you'll start the next year in fabulous financial shape.
If you're trading individual securities, you're almost certainly making a mistake. Because most professional managers can't outperform their benchmarks, and there's little reason to think that individuals can.
The very nature of finance is that it cannot be profitable unless it is significantly leveraged... and as long as there is debt, there can be failure and contagion.
If I was counselling an individual, and my purpose was to help that individual, the most important thing would be that you should save more. Because don't expect that your retirement will follow those trajectories that some advisers are telling you.
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