stocks of companies selling commodity-like products should come with a warning label: “Competition may prove hazardous to human wealth. - Warren Buffett

I like to study failure, actually. My partner says, "I want to know where I'll die so I'll never go there." We want to see what has caused businesses to go bad. The biggest thing that kills them is complacency. ... The danger would always be that you rest on your laurels.

The most common cause of low prices is pessimism — some times pervasive, some times specific to a company or industry. We want to do business in such an environment, not because we like pessimism but because we like the prices it produces. It’s optimism that is the enemy of the rational buyer.

When a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact.