Anthony Scilipoti

If the company might, you know, if it looks like it's a little bit expensive and it might potentially go down 5% or something or 10% or 20%, okay, you can deal with that.

But if you're investing in a company where if something goes wrong, you could wake up one day and it's down 20% or 50%, that's the one you don't want to have in your portfolio because investors will never invest with you again.

And you'll also be scarred because people make investments.

This is why it's so difficult to be a long-term sound investor because emotions get in the way, which is one of my rules.

Emotion has no place in investing.

Another rule is don't trust management.

I'm sure there's many management teams and I run my, you know, we're a operating business, a private company.

And it's not that they, you know, you shouldn't trust anything they say.

But again, it's a mindset.

Everything you do is about how you present your mindset going in.

And so if you go in with the mindset of don't trust, then you'll be curious.

Then you're going to ask questions.

It's not that you think that they're bad people.

I didn't say they're bad people.

I said, just don't trust.

Verify and then trust.

And then another rule would be that you have to read the notes to the financial statements.

First, before you actually read the statements, the notes to the financial statements tell you how the company modified the accounting because it made accounting choices.

We decided to account for these type of transactions in this way.

So then when you look at the financial statements, once you know how they're prepared, you can better interpret them.