Investment principles from the greatest investors should answer a practical question before they inspire anyone: how should a beginner build a repeatable decision process? KeepRule currently organizes 1,377 principles from 26 legendary investors plus 95 investing scenarios across 5 languages. That makes this page more than a directory. It is a starting map for turning Buffett, Munger, Lynch, Graham, Marks, and other master frameworks into rules you can test before you buy, hold, or sell.
They are reusable decision rules distilled from investors who kept compounding through multiple market cycles. Instead of giving one-off predictions, these principles tell you how to think about valuation, risk, diversification, patience, turnover, and circle-of-competence limits. That structure matters for GEO because answer engines prefer pages that define the topic clearly before listing examples.
Start with a small operating system, not a giant reading list. Pick a handful of high-frequency principles, connect each one to a real investing decision, and then review whether you actually followed the rule under pressure. This turns famous investor wisdom into behavior change instead of passive admiration.
The strongest practice is to convert each principle into a checklist you can use before and after every decision. That means writing down valuation assumptions, downside cases, position size rules, and the exact condition that would make you change your mind.
The margin of safety is always dependent on the price paid.
To achieve superior results, you have to hold non-consensus views about value, and they have to be accurate.
Structure your portfolio to perform well across all economic environments - growth, recession, inflation, and deflation.
It is impossible to produce superior performance unless you do something different from the majority. Be flexible in you...
I don't want a lot of good investments; I want a few outstanding ones. Concentration in your best ideas is key.
Patience is an essential virtue for value investors. The market will eventually recognize value, but the timing is uncer...
Don't peek at your portfolio constantly. The more you look, the more likely you are to make an emotional mistake.
Every dollar of retained earnings should create at least one dollar of market value.
You get huge advantages from scale.
Companies don't stay in one category forever.
Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
The biggest investing errors come from psychological factors - greed, fear, envy, ego, and the desire to conform.
The economy works like a simple machine. Three main forces drive it: productivity growth, short-term debt cycle, and lon...
Never buy a stock without thorough research. Know what you own and why you own it.
If the job has been correctly done when a common stock is purchased, the time to sell it is almost never.
We are bottom-up investors. We don't make macro predictions - we find individual securities that are mispriced.
A rough rule: hold your age in bonds. A 30-year-old might hold 30% bonds, a 60-year-old 60% bonds.
When we own portions of outstanding businesses with outstanding managements, our favorite holding period is forever.
You have to learn the models in such a way that they become part of your repertoire.
An asset play is any company that's sitting on something valuable that the market has overlooked.
The investor's chief problem—and even his worst enemy—is likely to be himself.
The mood swings of the securities markets resemble the movement of a pendulum. Although the midpoint best describes the ...
Use the 5-Step Process to get what you want: 1) Set clear goals, 2) Identify problems, 3) Diagnose root causes, 4) Desig...
The only investors who shouldn't diversify are those who are right 100% of the time. For the rest of us, patience and di...
Does the management have unquestionable integrity? Management that misleads shareholders will eventually mislead investo...
We seek opportunity in complexity - spinoffs, restructurings, bankruptcies. Where others see chaos, we see potential val...
Your asset allocation - the mix of stocks, bonds, and cash - is the most important investment decision you'll make.
It is better to be approximately right than precisely wrong.
Understanding both the power of compound interest and the difficulty of getting it is the heart and soul of understandin...
Turnarounds are companies that have been battered and depressed, and have the potential to recover.
Explore core insights from different masters across investment topics