During the recent depression many companies have been able to offset their operating losses by including in income profits arising from repurchases o… - Warren Buffett

My favourite holding period is forever

Trumpeting EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) is a particularly pernicious practice. Doing so implies that depreciation is not truly an expense, given that it is a “non-cash” charge.

Imagine, if you will, that at the beginning of this year a company paid all of its employees for the next ten years of their service (in the way they would lay out cash for a fixed asset to be useful for ten years). In the following nine years, compensation would be a “non-cash” expense — a reduction of a prepaid compensation asset established this year. Would anyone care to argue that the recording of the expense in years two through ten would be simply a bookkeeping formality?

I like thinking big. I always have. To me it's very simple: if you're going to be thinking anyway, you might as well think big.