On the virtues of ignoring market noise

Rob Sellar, head of North American equities for Aberdeen Asset Management, a big British investment house with a value bent, stopped by today and offered this bit of observation/investment advice:

At the end of the day, the brokerage community is all about generating noise, because that generates turnover.

A little later he said:

I hate selling stocks. If a business is a good business, it's still going to be in 20 years.

That last bit is of course not strictly true. (Wanna buy some Digital Equipment stock?) But still, it's kind of a cool way of looking at the world.