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The 10 Best things Steve Jobs Ever Said

How did one of the greatest entrepreneurs of the last 50 years think? How did he create one of the most successful companies of all time? Here are ten of the best things that he ever said . I believe they give us clues at identifying the next company that could have their stock become the monster stock of this decade.  As you read through these quotes does it make any other company come to mind besides Apple?

Steve Jobs Quotes:

“We’re gambling on our vision, and we would rather do that than make “me too” products. Let some other companies do that. For us, it’s always the next dream.” Interview about the release of the Macintosh (24 January 1984)

“Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world? ” A comment he made in persuading John Sculley to become Apple’s CEO.

“You‘ve got to start with the customer experience and work back toward the technology – not the other way around.” May 1997, World Wide Developers Conference

“Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me … Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful… that’s what matters to me.”

“That’s been one of my mantras — focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.” –BusinessWeek Interview May 1998

“It’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.” –BusinessWeek Interview May 1998

“Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.”

“Quality is more important than quantity. One home run is much better than two doubles.”

“You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.” Inc Magazine

“Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.”

Louis Ehrenkrantz’ 7 Golden Rules for Investing

First rule: develop a large appetite for
reading; it will hone your instincts for finding successful companies.

Second
rule
: don’t overdiversify; ten stocks, in at least three sectors, are

enough for the average investor.

Third rule: stick with your winners and sell
your losers; do not automatically sell when a stock hits a target price, but
continue to hold it as long as it performs well and has good prospects for the
future.

Fourth rule: look for top-quality, out-of-favor companies; look for
companies that produce an array of high-quality products and/or services.

Fifth
rule
: don’t worry about earnings if a company makes a popular product; strong

earnings growth will follow.

Sixth rule: don’t tinker with your portfolio; check
your portfolio’s performance only once or twice a year.

Seventh rule: don’t be
afraid to hold cash; it’s okay to be prepared to purchase stocks with
beaten-down prices after a correction.

Emerging markets at risk from a gigantic bubble

From :FT

By orchestrating a massive appreciation of the yen in the mid 1980s, the US condemned Japan to decades of stagnation and ended the challenge to its own economic hegemony. Effectively, Japan was forced to commit financial hara-kiri.

This theory, once confined to Japan’s nationalistic fringe, is now being used by the Chinese authorities to justify their resistance to a substantial revaluation of the renminbi. By so doing they are misdiagnosing Japan’s woes and misperceiving the true threat to their own economy. The threat to China does not lie in an appreciating currency, but elsewhere.

Here’s what happened in the case of Japan. In the Plaza Accord of 1985 the G7 attempted to address global imbalances – worrying then, but small beer by today’s standards – by “encouraging” significant changes in currency parities. They got what they wanted. The yen took off and never looked back.

Japanese policymakers accepted the loss of competitiveness not because they were submissive, but because they were brimming with self-confidence. They believed their economy would survive any downturn with little damage, and they were right: the recession of 1986 was short and shallow.

Furthermore they saw a strong yen as a useful weapon in a world in which Japan’s trading partners were imposing quotas on its most successful companies. Again they were right. The all-powerful yen allowed Japanese auto makers to build up manufacturing capacity inside key Western markets.

They also believed it was high time to shift the Japanese economy from exports to consumption, and that a stronger yen would raise the purchasing power of households. Here, though, they were wrong.

The spending spree of the late 1980s – when Japanese salarymen sprinkled gold-flakes on their noodles and secretaries stayed in the same upmarket Hawaiian resorts as American chief executives – is now a distant memory. (more…)

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