Apparently he was a macro player in the 20s (and wasn't very good) but devolved toward a concentrated, bottoms-up stock picker who focused on quality companies in the emerging technologies of the day (autos, electricity) by the 30s (I guess if you got in at the bottom you would look a genius). He was a long term holder. Interestingly his market timing skills were no good (who's are) and he exhibited a lot of regret in his trading (selling winners and holding losers).
"it may often profit the wisest (stock market player) to anticipate mob psychology rather than the real trend of events, and to ape unreason in anticipation...Thus, so long as the crowd can be relied on to act in a certain way, even if it be misguided, it will be to the advantage of the better informed professional to act in the same way - a short period ahead."
"The machine has merely been jammed as a result of the muddle." He did not see the world as euclidean (linear) but he certainly subscribed to cause and effect. He saw the economy as a machine that just needed its confidence up to keep going.
He saw the depression a result of under-investment and over-savings rooted in the psychology of fear/uncertainty. The solution was for the government to pick up the spending slack in order to revive confidence.
"As time goes on I get more and more convinced that the right method in investment is to put fairly large sums into enterprise which one thinks one knows something about and in the management of which one thoroughly believes."
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