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.
I have a saying: There are no brave old people in finance. Because if you're brave, you mostly get destroyed in your 30s and 40s. If you make it to your 50s and 60s and you're still prospering, you have a very good sense of how to avoid problems and when to be conservative or aggressive with your investments.
Not yet have I found any better method to prosper during the future financial chaos, which is likely to last many years, than to keep your net worth in shares of those corporations that have proven to have the widest profit margins and the most rapidly increasing profits. Earning power is likely to continue to be valuable, especially if diversified among many nations.
How did you go bankrupt?" Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.
Average investors can become experts in their own field and can pick winning stocks as effectively as Wall Street professionals by doing just a little research.
Credit cards are like snakes: Handle 'em long enough, and one will bite you.
Specie [gold and silver coin] is the most perfect medium because it will preserve its own level; because, having intrinsic and universal value, it can never die in our hands, and it is the surest resource of reliance in time of war.
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