Bill Ackman is a billionaire investor. He’s the founder and CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management. Read the best Bill Ackman quotes.
Bill Ackman was born and raised in a wealthy suburb of New York City called Chappaqua.
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Ackman earned an MBA from Harvard. After several ventures, he launched Pershing Square Capital Management in 2003.
Now, he’s a billionaire activist investor and philanthropist.
As a successful hedge fund manager, Ackman has a lot of knowledge and experience.
The following are the best Bill Ackman quotes to help your investing mindset.
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Top Bill Ackman quotes
1. “In order to be successful, you have to make sure that being rejected doesn’t bother you at all.” -Bill Ackman
2. “I’m not emotional about investments. Investing is something where you have to be purely rational and not let emotion affect your decision making – just the facts.” -Bill Ackman
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3. “Investing is a business where you can look very silly for a long period of time before you are proven right.” -Bill Ackman
4. “We require a high degree of predictability in the businesses in which we invest due to the highly concentrated nature of our portfolio.” -Bill Ackman
5. “One of our learnings from past mistakes is to act promptly when we discover new information about an investment that is inconsistent with our original thesis.” -Bill Ackman
6. “Our job is finding great businesses.” -Bill Ackman
7. “I’ve seen very few people in the world accomplish anything unless they were optimists.” -Bill Ackman
8. “Experience is making mistakes and learning from them.” -Bill Ackman
9. “It’s how you deal with adversity that determines your ultimate success, as opposed to how you deal with success that determines your ultimate success.” -Bill Ackman
10. “Look for very high-quality businesses. What we describe as simple, predictable, free cash flow generative, dominant businesses. A business that Warren Buffett would describe as having a moat around it.” -Bill Ackman
11. “I think most investors over-diversify because they’re lazy. They haven’t done enough research into any of their companies. If they’ve got 200 positions, do you think they know what’s going on at any one of those companies at this moment?” -Bill Ackman
12. “If you can’t predict the cash flows, you don’t know what it’s worth. If you don’t know what it’s worth, you can’t invest.” -Bill Ackman
13. “Invest in businesses you can understand.” -Bill Ackman
14. “Invest at a reasonable price. It could be a fabulous business that’s done very well over a long period of time, but if you pay too much for it, you’re not going to earn a very good return.” -Bill Ackman
15. “If you’re investing for the long-term, you want to invest in businesses that have very little debt.” -Bill Ackman
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16. “You want businesses to have what people call barriers to entry. You want a business where it’s hard for someone tomorrow to set up a new company to compete with you or put you out of business.” -Bill Ackman
17. “You want a company that’s fairly immune to what’s going on in the world.” -Bill Ackman
18. “We expect to continue to concentrate the substantial majority of our capital in about 8 to 12 investments, and estimate that our typical holding period will be long-term, typically four or more years.” -Bill Ackman
19. “What the market tells you in the short term is what a certain subset of people believe. That doesn’t mean they’re right.” -Bill Ackman
20. “You have to make sure that the management and the people that control the business think about you as an owner and will protect your interests.” -Bill Ackman
21. “Our long-term goal is to compound our capital at a high rate of return while minimizing the risk of permanent loss of capital.” -Bill Ackman
22. “Do your own research and get a good understanding of the business.” -Bill Ackman
23. “It’s safest to invest in businesses that aren’t controlled. Unless the controlling shareholder is someone that we trust, unless it’s someone that has a great track record for taking care of all the minority investors, it can be a risky proposition to invest in because you’re at the whim of the controlling shareholder.” -Bill Ackman
24. “The best businesses are the ones that don’t require a lot of capital to be reinvested into the company.” -Bill Ackman
25. “You want a business you can own forever.” -Bill Ackman
26. “Invest in listed companies, companies that trade on the stock market. Why? Because those businesses tend to be more established, meet certain hurdles before they can go public, and stocks are liquid, so you can change your mind if you want to sell.” -Bill Ackman
27. “I am always prepared to do the right thing regardless of what other people think.” -Bill Ackman
28. “If I believe that I am right, I will take it to the end of the earth until I am proven right.” -Bill Ackman
29. “From day one, I was always unafraid to ask someone to invest because, I thought that, while capital was a commodity, good investment ideas were rare assets.” -Bill Ackman
30. “Why not own the best 10 or 11 investments, as opposed to ideas 12 through 25?” -Bill Ackman
31. “There are very few great investments at any one time.” -Bill Ackman
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