45 Quotes by David Einhorn

Microsoft could help Facebook with one of the biggest challenges, namely monetizing its traffic without reducing the user’s experience. It’s obvious that Microsoft needs traffic and Facebook needs search.

With poker, you have a resolution of the hand within a couple of minutes. Whereas, even if the thought process in investing is very much the same, you're looking at an outcome that could be 2, 3, 4, 5 years from when you make the original decision. And the mindset related to that is very different.

In my business investing, you are buying a stock, and someone else is selling the stock. Right there, that's like a debate. Is the stock going up, or is it going to go down?

After my undergraduate, I've written a thesis that was in the government department, but largely, it turned out almost an economic type of thesis. And I was very interested in that, and I wanted to go get a Ph.D. in Economics.

I worked in investment banking for two years. I was in a program where they kind of just owned you. And you - I didn't realize that I've signed up for that, which was one of the problems. I didn't know anybody who'd done this.

Investing in a poker game and investing in stocks, at least the way I do it, it's a very similar skillset.

For one thing, Greenlight only hires nice people. By that, I don't mean that we avoid hiring jerks. I mean we actively look to hire people who are nice.

In an industry that celebrates personal sacrifice as a symbol of commitment, you might not consider 'making sure everyone gets home for dinner' to be a mark of success, but creating and maintaining that culture is one of the things I'm most proud of.

Obviously, I wasn't expecting Wall Street to be a laid-back place. I was prepared for hard work. Sadly, much of the work the new guys were asked to do and the insane hours we were expected to keep had little to do with making the bank more productive. It felt more like hazing.