Margin of safety

Their wordsYou want to buy a company at a price that if you're wrong about what you think it's worth and it turns out to be worth 30% less, you paid a deep enough discount to your estimate that you're still okay. A big part of investing is not losing money.

Their wordsthe example that I always use is Bill Gates when he started Microsoft took the most audacious entrepreneurial swing that maybe anyone's ever taken of saying every desk in the world needs a computer on this and he's saying this in 1974 whatever it was crazy amount of risk crazy bold Vision at the same time he said that he always wanted Microsoft to have enough cash in the bank to make payroll for one year with no Revenue which is the most conservative pessimistic way to run a business so he's like very risk-taking and very conservative paranoid at the same time very good at getting rich very good at staying Rich at the same time

Their wordsI think broadly it's anything that's going to prevent you from achieving the goals that you want that's a a very basic answer but I think that's what it is and the reason that's important is because take volatility in the stock market is that risk well it could be if you're a day trader then yes if the market goes down tomorrow that's a risk for you if you're in if you're going to retire in 50 years it's not whatsoever

Their wordswhenever I was surprised and I think whenever most people it's surprised it's because of something that never happened in their lifetime before but it happened before so it doesn't happen in their context but it happens so you don't see it so you don't think about it