Background Image

...

... But The Important Thing Is That When You Do Find One Where You Really Do Know What You Are Doing, You Must Buy In Quantity.... Charlie And I Have Made A Dozen Or So Very Big Decisions Relative To Net Worth, Although Not As Big As They Should Have Been. And In Each Of Those, We've Known That We Were Almost Certain To Be Right Going In.

-Warren Buffett

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

... But The Important

Warren Buffett

...

... But The Important Thing Is That When You Do Find One Where You Really Do Know What You Are Doing, You Must Buy In Quantity.... Charlie And I Have Made A Dozen Or So Very Big Decisions Relative To Net Worth, Although Not As Big As They Should Have Been. And In Each Of Those, We've Known That We Were Almost Certain To Be Right Going In.

Views: 6

Topic

More From Warren Buffett

I Would Say That Life At 84, I Am Having As Much Fun As I've Ever Had In My Life. I Mean I Get To Do What I Love Every Day With The People I Love-and It Just Doesn't Get Any Better Than That.

An Investor Will Succeed By Coupling Good Business Judgment With An Ability To Insulate His Thoughts And Behavior From The Super-contagious Emotions That Swirl About The Marketplace.

When You Listen To Tax-cut Rhetoric, Remember That Giving One Class Of Taxpayer A Break Requires - Now Or Down The Line - That An Equivalent Burden Be Imposed On Other Parties. In Other Words, If I Get A Break, Someone Else Pays. Government Can't Deliver A Free Lunch To The Country As A Whole. It Can However, Determine Who Pays For Lunch.

Investing Is Not As Tough As Being A Top-notch Bridge Player. All It Takes Is The Ability To See Things As They Really Are.

Our Investments Continue To Be Few In Number And Simple In Concept: The Truly Big Investment Idea Can Usually Be Explained In A Short Paragraph. We Like A Business With Enduring Competitive Advantages That Is Run By Able And Owner-oriented People. When These Attributes Exist, And When We Can Make Purchases At Sensible Prices, It Is Hard To Go Wrong (a Challenge We Periodically Manage To Overcome).

Do Not Take Yearly Results Too Seriously. Instead, Focus On Four Or Five-year Averages.

I’ve Never Believed In Risking What My Family And Friends Have And Need In Order To Pursue What They Don’t Have And Don’t Need.

Family And Friends

It's Better To Build Than To Buy If You Can Find The Right People.

I Mean You Know At Midnight Everything Is Going To Turn To Pumpkins And Mice; Right? But If The Evening Goes Along, I Mean, You Know, The Guys Look Better All The Time, The Music Sounds Better, It's More And More Fun, You Think Why The Hell Should I Leave At Quarter Of 12. I'll Leave At Two Minutes To 12. But The Trouble Is, There Are No Clocks On The Wall. And Everybody Thinks They're Going To Leave At Two Minutes To 12.

What Motivates Most Gold Purchasers Is Their Belief That The Ranks Of The Fearful Will Grow. During The Past Decade That Belief Has Proved Correct. Beyond That, The Rising Price Has On Its Own Generated Additional Buying Enthusiasm, Attracting Purchasers Who See The Rise As Validating An Investment Thesis. As 'bandwagon' Investors Join Any Party, They Create Their Own Truth - For A While.

We Want To Use Cash. The Reason We Haven't Used Our Cash Two Years Ago, We Just Didn't Find Things That Were That Attractive. But When People Talk About Cash Being King, It's Not King If It Just Sits There And Never Does Anything. There Are Times When Cash Buys More Than Other Times, And This Is One Of The Other Times When It Buys A Fair Amount More, So We Use It.

It's Just That Right Now The Athlete's On The Floor. But We - This Is A Super Athlete.

The Fed Is The Greatest Hedge Fund In History.

That Would Be Nice If [people] Stuck [treasury Bills] All Under A Mattress, But They Got To Buy Something With Them. Sometimes They Buy A Treasury Note, Sometimes They Set Up Sovereign Wealth Funds. They Can Do All Kinds Of Things. They Can Buy Our Companies Here. As Long As We Consume More Than We Produce, And We Trade Away Little Pieces Of The Country Daily, They're Going To Own Something. Now, They Can't Run From American Assets. I Mean Every Day The Rest Of The World Is Going To Have About Two Billion More Of American Assets Than We Have, As Long As They Sell Us These Goods.

Stop Trying To Predict The Direction Of The Stock Market, The Economy Or Elections.

Don't Risk What Is Important To You, To Get What Is Not Important To You.

Valuing A Business Is Part Art And Part Science.

I Have Pledged - To You, The Rating Agencies And Myself - To Always Run Berkshire With More Than Ample Cash. We Never Want To Count On The Kindness Of Strangers In Order To Meet Tomorrow's Obligations. When Forced To Choose, I Will Not Trade Even A Night's Sleep For The Chance Of Extra Profits.

This Country Is Going - Be Living Better Ten Years From Now Than It Is Now. It Will Be Living Better In 20 Years From Now Than Ten Years From Now. The Ingredients That Made This Country, You Know, The Miracle Of The World - I Mean We Had A Seven For One Improvement In The Average American Standard Of Living In The 20th Century.

I Will Do Anything That Is Basically Covered By The Law To Reduce Berkshire's Tax Rate. For Example, On Wind Energy, We Get A Tax Credit If We Build A Lot Of Wind Farms. That's The Only Reason To Build Them. They Don't Make Sense Without The Tax Credit.

If You Aren't Willing To Own A Stock For Ten Years, Don't Even Think About Owning It For Ten Minutes. Put Together A Portfolio Of Companies Whose Aggregate Earnings March Upward Over The Years, And So Also Will The Portfolio's Market Value.

All There Is To Investing Is Picking Good Stocks At Good Times And Staying With Them As Long As They Remain Good Companies.

People Went Crazy With Tulip Bulbs. They Went Crazy With The South Sea Bubble, They Went Crazy Internet Stocks, They Went Crazy With The Uranium Stocks Back When I Was First Getting Started.

I Don't Think You Can Have A Better Secretary Of The Treasury Than Hank Paulson.

You Know, People Talk About This Being An Uncertain Time. You Know, All Time Is Uncertain. I Mean, It Was Uncertain Back In - In 2007, We Just Didn't Know It Was Uncertain. It Was - Uncertain On September 10th, 2001. It Was Uncertain On October 18th, 1987, You Just Didn't Know It.

Uncertain Times

I Have An 800 Freephone Number Now That I Call If I Get The Urge To Buy An Airline Stock. I Call At Two In The Morning And I Say: "my Name Is Warren And I'm An Aeroholic." And Then They Talk Me Down.

With Housing It's Something Even More Dramatic Than That, Because Most People Aspire To Own Their Own Home.if You Really Think That Houses Prices Are Going To Go Up Next Year And The Year After, You Feel If I Don't Buy It This Year, I'm Going To Have To Buy It Next Year.that's Not True Of An Internet Stock. But It's True Of A Home.

The Smartest Side To Take In A Bidding War Is The Losing Side.

Our Marketable Equities Tell Us By Their Operating Results - Not By Their Daily, Or Even Yearly, Price Quotations - Whether Our Investments Are Successful. The Market May Ignore Business Success For A While, But Eventually Will Confirm It.

Business Success

If Horses Had Controlled Investment Decisions, There Would Have Been No Auto Industry.

Does Management Resist The Institutional Imperative?

Making Money Isn't The Backbone Of Our Guiding Purpose; Making Money Is The By-product Of Our Guiding Purpose. If You're Doing Something You Love, You're More Likely To Put Your All Into It, And That Generally Equates To Making Money

I Am Quite Serious When I Say That I Do Not Believe There Are, On The Whole Earth Besides, So Many Intensified Bores As In These United States. No Man Can Form An Adequate Idea Of The Real Meaning Of The Word, Without Coming Here.

We Have Usually Made Our Best Purchases When Apprehensions About Some Macro Event Were At A Peak. Fear Is The Foe Of The Faddist, But The Friend Of The Fundamentalist.

Too Often, Executive Compensation In The U.s. Is Ridiculously Out Of Line With Performance. That Won't Change, Moreover, Because The Deck Is Stacked Against Investors When It Comes To The Ceo's Pay.

It's The Deleveraging That's Going On Right Now That Has Caused The Credit Crisis.

Focus Alone Is Not Enough; Putting In The Time To Commit Is Also Crucial To Achieve Success.

You Know ... You Keep Doing The Same Things And You Keep Getting The Same Result Over And Over Again.

I Understand Goldman Sachs Businesses. We Do Lot Of Business With Him, And Ge Has Been - I Think It's The Longest Running Stock In The Dow Jones Industrial Average. It Will Be 100 Years Now It Will Be Around. I Hope I'm Around Then, Too. And It Was An Attractive Investment. And We Have Had A Lot Of Money Around, Over The Last Two Years, And We're Seeing Things That Are Attractive Now.

You Could Be Somewhere Where The Mail Was Delayed Three Weeks And Do Just Fine Investing.

Whether We’re Talking About Socks Or Stocks, I Like Buying Quality Merchandise When It Is Marked Down.

Investing Money

Our Favorite Holding Period Is Forever.

Funny Inspirational

The Reaction Of Weak Management To Weak Operations Is Often Weak Accounting.

Sound Investing Can Make You Very Wealthy If You're Not In Too Big A Hurry

If You Get To My Age In Life And Nobody Thinks Well Of You, I Don't Care How Big Your Bank Account Is, Your Life Is A Disaster.

The [stock] Market,like The Lord, Helps Those Who Help Themselves. But, Unlike The Lord, The Market Does Not Forgive Those Who Know Not What They Do.

It's Going To Be Tough Because The Economy Is Going To Be Getting Worse For A While. And It Might Fall Off A Cliff If This Doesn't Pass. But Nobody Will Ever Know That If It Does.

It's Easy To Identify Many Investment Managers With Great Recent Records. But Past Results, Though Important, Do Not Suffice When Prospective Performance Is Being Judged. How The Record Has Been Achieved Is Crucial.

If You Can Tell Me Who Your Heroes Are, I Can Tell You How You're Going To Turn Out In Life.

If Book Knowledge Made Great Investors, Than The Librarians Would All Be Rich.

In Other Words, The Percentage Change In Book Value In Any Given Year Is Likely To Be Reasonably Close To That Year's Change In Intrinsic Value.

The Best Thing That Happens To Us Is When A Great Company Gets Into Temporary Trouble...we Want To Buy Them When They're On The Operating Table.

Investing Money

Investment Decision Should Be Made On The Basis Of The Most Probable Compounding Of After-tax Net Worth With Minimum Risk.

Investors Should Remember That Their Scorecard Is Not Computed Using Olympic-diving Methods: Degree-of-difficulty Doesn't Count. If You Are Right About A Business Whose Value Is Largely Dependent On A Single Key Factor That Is Both Easy To Understand And Enduring, The Payoff Is The Same As If You Had Correctly Analyzed An Investment Alternative Characterized By Many Constantly Shifting And Complex Variables.

The Problem With Commodities Is That You Are Betting On What Someone Else Would Pay For Them In Six Months. The Commodity Itself Isn't Going To Do Anything For You....it Is An Entirely Different Game To Buy A Lump Of Something And Hope That Somebody Else Pays You More For That Lump Two Years From Now Than It Is To Buy Something That You Expect To Produce Income For You Over Time.

There's Nothing Inappropriate About Having Debt In America. It's What Helped Us Grow Over Time. And It's When Debt Gets Out Of Control That You Worry.

By Periodically Investing In An Index Fund, The Know-nothing Investors Can Actually Outperform Most Investment Professionals.

I Have A House That I Bought 55 Years Ago. It's Warm In The Winter; It's Cool In The Summer. It Has Everything I Wanted, Plus It Has All Kinds Of Good Memories. Like My Kids, I Have Good Thoughts About That. I Can't Imagine Living Any Better.

We Say We Are Trying To Buy Into Businesses With Excellent Economics, Run By Honest And Able People At A Decent Price. We Buy Very Few Securities, So We Look At It As "focused" Investing.

You Really Don't Need Leverage In This World Much. If You're Smart, You're Going To Make A Lot Of Money Without Borrowing. I've Never Borrowed A Significant Amount Of Money In My Life. Never. Never Will. I've Got No Interest In It.

You Have Hedge Funds And People Like That Buying These Assets To Yield 15 Or 20 Percent, I Mean, That's The Buyer For These People That Are Trying To Unload Them.

Do What You Love And Work For Whom You Admire The Most, And You've Given Yourself The Best Chance In Life You Can.

The Good Thing Is, We Have Household Formation In This Country.

Too Often, Executive Compensation In The U.s. Is Ridiculously Out Of Line With Performance. That Won't Change, Moreover, Because The Deck Is Stacked Against Investors When It Comes To The Ceo's Pay. The Upshot Is That A Mediocre-or-worse Ceo - Aided By His Handpicked Vp Of Human Relations And A Consultant From The Ever-accommodating Firm Of Ratchet, Ratchet And Bingo - All Too Often Receives Gobs Of Money From An Ill-designed Compensation Arrangement.

If At First You Do Succeed, Quit Trying On Investing.

Never Lie Under Any Circumstances.

Emotional Makeup Is More Important Than Technical Skill

The Stock Market Is A Wonderfully Efficient Mechanism For Transferring Wealth From The Impatient To The Patient.

Does The Business Have A Consistent Operating History?

None Of This Means, However, That A Business Or Stock Is An Intelligent Purchase Simply Because It Is Unpopular; A Contrarian Approach Is Just As Foolish As A Follow-the-crowd Strategy. What's Required Is Thinking Rather Than Polling. Unfortunately, Bertrand Russell's Observation About Life In General Applies With Unusual Force In The Financial World: "most Men Would Rather Die Than Think. Many Do."

There Is No Perfect Mathematical Formula For Pricing A Business.

I Do Know That When I Am 60, I Should Be Attempting To Achieve Different Personal Goals Than Those Which Had Priority At Age 20.

The Most Common Cause Of Low Prices Is Pessimism - Some Times Pervasive, Some Times Specific To A Company Or Industry. We Want To Do Business In Such An Environment, Not Because We Like Pessimism But Because We Like The Prices It Produces. It's Optimism That Is The Enemy Of The Rational Buyer.

There's Not Many Businesses Where Someone Can Come In And Offer To Cut The Price In Half And Somebody Doesn't Think About Shifting. But That's The Nature Of The Ratings Business.

I Don't Think It Would Be Crazy To Have A Model Or An Entity Model On The Reconstruction Finance Corp.

The Woman That Comes In, Takes The Wastebasket Away, She's Paying 15.3 Or Whatever It Is On Payroll Tax Alone. I Mean It Is - I Never Had It So Good.

Charlie [munger] And I Are Not Big Fans Of Resumes. Instead, We Focus On Brains, Passion And Integrity.

... The Best Way To Own Common Stocks Is Through An Index Fund.

Active Management

I Mean, In Terms Of Alternatives, Some People Have Suggested For Example That Why Don't We - Why Isn't America Doing What Berkshire Hathaway Is Doing? Why Isn't That A Better Deal For America?

In My Opinion, The Entire Field Of Investment Management, Involving Hundreds Of Billions Of Dollars, Would Be More Satisfactorily Conducted If Everyone Had A Good Yardstick For Measurement Of Ability And Sensibly Applied It.

The First Rule Is Not To Lose. The Second Rule Is Not To Forget The First Rule.

You’ve Gotta Keep Control Of Your Time, And You Can’t Unless You Say No. You Can’t Let People Set Your Agenda In Life.

Confidence In Markets And In Institutions, It's A Lot Like Oxygen. When You Have It, You Don't Even Think About It. It's Indispensable. You Can Go Years Without Thinking About It. When It's Gone For Five Minutes, It's The Only Thing To Think About.

There Is No Question We Have An Access Stock.

The Power Of Unconditional Love. I Mean, There Is No Power On Earth Like Unconditional Love.

Unconditional Love

The Best Education You Can Get Is Investing In Yourself, And That Doesn't Mean College Or University.

You Don't Need To Be An Expert In Order To Achieve Satisfactory Investment Returns. But If You Aren't, You Must Recognize Your Limitations And Follow A Course Certain To Work Reasonably Well. Keep Things Simple And Don't Swing For The Fences.

We've Used Derivatives For Many, Many Years. I Don't Think Derivatives Are Evil, Per Se, I Think They Are Dangerous.

I Don't Know That I Could Draw One That's Perfect. But I'd Rather By Approximately Right Than Precisely Wrong, And It Would Be Precisely Wrong To Turn It Down.

What You Really Want To Do In Investments Is Figure Out What's Important And Knowable. If It's Unimportant Or Unknowable You Forget About It.

Do What You Would Do For Free, Having Passion For What You Do Is The Most Important Thing.

Passion For What You Do

We Look For Things I Can Understand. A Lot Of Businesses I Don't Understand.

The Only Way To Get Love Is To Be Lovable. It's Very Irritating If You Have A Lot Of Money. You'd Like To Think You Could Write A Check: "i'll Buy A Million Dollars' Worth Of Love." But It Doesn't Work That Way. The More You Give Love Away, The More You Get.

I Happen To Have A Talent For Allocating Capital. But My Ability To Use That Talent Is Completely Dependent On The Society I Was Born Into. If I'd Been Born Into A Tribe Of Hunters, This Talent Of Mine Would Be Pretty Worthless. I Can't Run Very Fast. I'm Not Particularly Strong. I'd Probably End Up As Some Wild Animal's Dinner.

Stocks Of Companies Selling Commodity-like Products Should Come With A Warning Label: "competition May Prove Hazardous To Human Wealth".

We All Make Mistakes. If You Can't Make Mistakes, You Can't Make Decisions. I've Made A Lot Bigger Mistakes Myself.

As Of 1992, In Fact-though The Picture Would Have Improved Since Then-the Money That Had Been Made Since The Dawn Of Aviation By All Of This Country's Airline Companies Was Zero. Absolutely Zero.

Airline Business

With A Wonderful Business, You Can Figure Out What Will Happen; You Can't Figure Out When It Will Happen. You Don't Want To Focus On When, You Want To Focus On What. If You're Right About What, You Don't Have To Worry About When

You Are Neither Right Nor Wrong Because The Crowd Disagrees With You.

Do Not Put All Your Eggs In One Basket.

Investment Success

It Is Better To Point Out Your Own Mistakes Than Have Somebody Else Do It.

A Market Downturn, Doesn't Bother Us. For Us And Our Long Term Investors, It Is An Opportunity To Increase Our Ownership Of Great Companies With Great Management At Good Prices. Only For Short Term Investors And Market Timers Is A Correction Not An Opportunity.

With Each Investment You Make, You Should Have The Courage And The Conviction To Place At Least Ten Per Cent Of Your Net Worth In That Stock

Asset-heavy Businesses Generally Earn Low Rates Of Return - Rates That Often Barely Provide Enough Capital To Fund The Inflationary Needs Of The Existing Business, With Nothing Left Over For Real Growth, For Distribution To Owners, Or For Acquisition Of New Businesses

Anyone Who Believes A Growth Rate In Excess Of 15% Per Annum Over The Long Term Is Attainable Should Pursue A Career In Sales, But Avoid One In Mathematics.

I Look For Businesses In Which I Think I Can Predict What They're Going To Look Like In Ten To Fifteen Years Time. Take Wrigley's Chewing Gum. I Don't Think The Internet Is Going To Change How People Chew Gum.

Fear Is The Foe Of The Faddist, But The Friend Of The Fundamentalist.

We Have Learned To Turn Out Lots Of Goods And Services, But We Haven't Learned As Well How To Have Everybody Share In The Bounty. The Obligation Of A Society As Prosperous As Ours Is To Figure Out How Nobody Gets Left Too Far Behind.

I Don't Read Economic Forecasts. I Don't Read The Funny Papers.

I Would Say It's More Important Who The Treasury Secretary Is Than Who The Vice President Is. If You Want To Have A Debate Here, I'd Like A Debate Between Potential Treasury Secretaries Than The Vice Presidential Debate.

It's Just That I Landed Up In A Terrific Capitalist System. One That Pays People Who Allocate Capital Extraordinarily Well. Intrinsically, I'm Not Worth As Much As Somebody Who Invents Something That Could Improves People's Life, Or Health Or Whatever.

Having A Large Amount Of Leverage Is Like Driving A Car With A Dagger On The Steering Wheel Pointed At Your Heart. If You Do That, You Will Be A Better Driver. There Will Be Fewer Accidents But When They Happen, They Will Be Fatal.

It's Good To Learn From Your Mistakes. It's Better To Learn From Other People's Mistakes.

Learn From Your Mistakes

If You Own The Only Newspaper In Town, Up Until The Last Five Years Or So, You Have Pricing Power And You Didn't Have To Go To The Office.

Your Money Can Be Inflated Away But Your Knowledge And Talent Cannot.

Investing Is The Greatest Business In The World Because You Never Have To Swing. You Stand At The Plate; The Pitcher Throws You General Motors At 47! U.s. Steel At 39! And Nobody Calls A Strike On You. There's No Penalty Except Opportunity. All Day You Wait For The Pitch You Like; Then, When The Fielders Are Asleep, You Step Up And Hit It.

Anything Can Happen In Stock Markets And You Ought To Conduct Your Affairs So That If The Most Extraordinary Events Happen, That You're Still Around To Play The Next Day.

Activity Is The Enemy Of Investment Returns.

We've Actually Been Pretty Good On Exports. I Mean We Are Exporting 12% Of Our Gdp Now Roughly.

An Investor Needs To Do Very Few Things Right As Long As He Or She Avoids Big Mistakes.

If You Understood A Business Perfectly And The Future Of The Business, You Need Very Little In The Way Of A Margin Of Safety.

You Need A Lot Of Curiosity For A Long, Long Time.

There Are Certain Things That Cannot Be Adequately Explained To A Virgin Either By Words Or Pictures.

It Irritates The Hell Out Of Me But You Can't Buy Love.

There Are Three Kinds Of People: 1. Innovators. 2. Imitators. 3. Idiots.

I Put Heavy Weight On Certainty. It's Not Risky To Buy Securities At A Fraction Of What They're Worth.

I Would Rather Sustain The Penalties Resulting From Over-conservatism Than Face The Consequences Of Error, Perhaps With Permanent Capital Loss, Resulting From The Adoption Of "new Era" Philosophy Where Trees Really Do Grow To The Sky.

And People Really Behaved In A Fraudulent Way Or Something, We'll Go Back And Find The Culprits Later On. But That Really Isn't The Problem We Have. I Mean That's Where It Came From, Though. We Leveraged Up And If You Have A 20 Percent Fall In Value Of A $20 Trillion Asset, That's $4 Trillion. And When $4 Trillion Lands - Losses Land In The Wrong Part Of This Economy, It Can Gum Up The Whole Place.

[gold] Gets Dug Out Of The Ground In Africa, Or Someplace. Then We Melt It Down, Dig Another Hole, Bury It Again And Pay People To Stand Around Guarding It. It Has No Utility. Anyone Watching From Mars Would Be Scratching Their Head.

You Should Be Unconcerned About Short-term Price Action When You Own The Securities Directly, Just As You Were Unconcerned When You Owned Them Indirectly Through Bpl. I Think About Them As Businesses, Not "stocks", And If The Business Does All Right Over The Long Term, So Will The Stock.

I Always Invest In Companies An Idiot Could Run, Because One Day One Will.

It's Nice To Have A Lot Of Money, But You Know, You Don't Want To Keep It Around Forever. I Prefer Buying Things. Otherwise, It's A Little Like Saving Sex For Your Old Age.

You Don't Have To Be A Genius To Invest Well

I View Derivatives As Time Bombs, Both For The Parties That Deal In Them And The Economic System.

I Think That They Hoped The Private Sector Would Come In. And The Private Sector Tried To Come In Until They Saw The Size Of The Problem. I Mean, From Were People On That Weekend That Thought They'd Had A Solution. And Then The Hole Kept Getting Bigger And Bigger. And All Of A Sudden Became Apparent That 20 Billion Wouldn't Do It And 30 Billion Wouldn't Do It And 40 Billion Wouldn't Do It. So It Got Beyond Anybody's Ability To Certainly To Do It In A Short Period Of Time.

... But The Important Thing Is That When You Do Find One Where You Really Do Know What You Are Doing, You Must Buy In Quantity.... Charlie And I Have Made A Dozen Or So Very Big Decisions Relative To Net Worth, Although Not As Big As They Should Have Been. And In Each Of Those, We've Known That We Were Almost Certain To Be Right Going In.

When We Went Crazy, And We Did Go Crazy On Residential Real Estate, It Set Things In Motion That Just - The Dominoes Started Toppling.

I Have Always Cautioned Partners That I Considered Three Years A Minimum In Determining Whether We Were "performing".

The Banking Business Is No Favorite Of Ours. When Assets Are Twenty Times Equity - A Common Ratio In This Industry - Mistakes That Involve Only A Small Portion Of Assets Can Destroy A Major Portion Of Equity. And Mistakes Have Been The Rule Rather Than The Exception At Many Major Banks.

Never Test The Depth Of River With Both The Feet.

I Mean, We'll Be Pounding On The Guy's Chest, You Know, On The Floor, And You Know, He's Not Going To Just Jump Up All Of A Sudden. So It Makes It Tough. I Mean, It's Tough To Be In The Legislature, You Know, And Vote For Something And Then People Say, Well, You Voted All This Money And You Know, It's All Getting Spent. It Isn't Getting Spent. It's Getting Invested. But It's All Getting Spent. Nothing's Happening.

Paradoxically, When 'dumb' Money Acknowledges Its Limitations, It Ceases To Be Dumb.

I Always Knew I Was Going To Be Rich. I Don't Think I Ever Doubted It For A Minute.

I Think Confidence Will Come Back.

I Measure Success By How Many People Love Me. And The Best Way To Be Loved Is To Be Lo Veable.

Measure Of Success

There Is No Substitute For A Local Newspaper That Is Doing Its Job.

Cash, Though, Is To A Business As Oxygen Is To An Individual: Never Thought About When It Is Present, The Only Thing In Mind When It Is Absent... When Bills Come Due, Only Cash Is Legal Tender. Don't Leave Home Without It.

Consciously Paying More For A Stock Than Its Calculated Value - In The Hope That It Can Soon Be Sold For A Still-higher Price - Should Be Labelled Speculation

In Investing, Just As In Baseball, To Put Runs On The Scoreboard, One Must Watch The Playing Field, Not The Scoreboard.

Bull Markets And Bear Markets Can Obscure Mathematical Laws, They Cannot Repeal Them.

If You Owe Money, You Can't Pay Them Out. You Just Pay For Everything, You Do Smart Things, You Eventually Get Very Rich.

Aig Would Be Doing Fine Today. It Was One Of The Ten Largest Companies In The United States In Terms Of Market Value, Over 200 Billion, The Most Respected Insurer And Everything In The World.

... Not Doing What We Love In The Name Of Greed Is Very Poor Management Of Our Lives.

Investment Success

Mr. Market Is Kind Of A Drunken Psycho. Some Days He Gets Very Enthused, Some Days He Gets Very Depressed. And When He Get Really Enthused You Sell To Him, And If He Gets Depressed, You Buy From Him. There's No Moral Taint Attached To That.

Businesses Always Have Opportunities To Improve Service, Product Lines, Manufacturing Techniques, And The Like, And Obviously These Opportunities Should Be Seized. But A Business That Constantly Encounters Major Change Also Encounters Many Chances For Major Error

Whatever You Like To Do, Make It A Hobby And Whatever The World Likes To Do, Make It A Business.

Accounting Is The Language Of Business.

If You've Been Playing Poker For Half An Hour And You Still Don't Know Who The Patsy Is, You're The Patsy.

We Only Want To Link Up With People Whom We Like, Admire, And Trust. ... We Do Not Wish To Join With Managers Who Lack Admirable Qualities, No Matter How Attractive The Prospects Of Their Business. We've Never Succeeded In Making A Good Deal With A Bad Person.

Don't Settle For Anything Other Than Your Passion - If You're Lucky Enough To Find It.

If You Do Smart Things And Use Leverage And Do One Wrong Thing Along The Way, It Could Wipe You Out, Because Anything Times Zero Is Zero. But It's Reinforcing When The People Around You Are Doing It Successfully, You're Doing It Successfully, And It's A Lot Like Cinderella At The Ball.

Government Can't Deliver A Free Lunch To The Country As A Whole. It Can, However, Determine Who Pays For Lunch. And Last Week The Senate Handed The Bill To The Wrong Party... The Poor And Middle Class.

What's Going To Happen - Things We're Doing Are Going To Have Some Inflationary Consequences.

A Hyperactive Stock Market Is The Pickpocket Of Enterprise.

Larger Sums May Be An Advantage At Some Cases And A Disadvantage At Others.

It's A Big Mistake To Try And Mislead People. They Will Turn Around.

The Most Common Cause Of Low Prices Is Pessimism - Sometimes Pervasive, Sometimes Specific To A Company Or Industry. We Want To Do Business In Such An Environment, Not Because We Like Pessimism But Because We Like The Prices It Produces.

There's No Use Running If You're On The Wrong Road.

I Look At Everything. That's My Job. I Really Do, Every Day. I Think About Everything.

What We Learn From History Is That People Don't Learn From History.

If You Have A Harem Of 40 Women, You Never Get To Know Any Of Them Very Well.

Well, It May Be All Right In Practice, But It Will Never Work In Theory

In The 20th Century, The United States Endured Two World Wars And Other Traumatic And Expensive Military Conflicts; The Depression; A Dozen Or So Recessions And Financial Panics; Oil Shocks; A Flu Epidemic; And The Resignation Of A Disgraced President. Yet The Dow Rose From 66 To 11,497.

As I Have Mentioned Before, We Cannot Make The Same Sort Of Money Out Of Permanent Ownership Of Controlled Businesses That Can Be Made From Buying And Reselling Such Businesses, Or From Skilled Investment In Marketable Securities. Nevertheless, They Offer A Pleasant Long Term Form Of Activity (when Conducted In Conjunction With High Grade, Able People) At Satisfactory Rates Of Return.

Uncertainty Is The Friend Of The Buyer Of Long Term Values.

Buy A Cross Section Of American Industry, And If A Cross Section Of American Industry Doesn't Work, Certainly Trying To Pick The Little Beauties Here And There Isn't Going To Work Either.

First, Many In Wall Street - A Community In Which Quality Control Is Not Prized - Will Sell Investors Anything They Will Buy.

The Latter Qualification Brings To Mind A Fellow Who Applied For A Job And Stated He Had Twenty Years Of Experience-which Was Corrected By A Former Employer To Read "one Year's Experience-twenty Times.

A Very Rich Person Should Leave His Kids Enough To Do Anything, But Not Enough To Do Nothing.

I Don't Really Think That, As A Society, We [americans] Want To Confer Blessings On Generation After Generation Who Contribute Nothing To Society, Simply Because Somebody In The Far Distant Past Happened To Amass A Great Sum Of Wealth.

An Ipo Is Like A Negotiated Transaction - The Seller Chooses When To Come Public - And It's Unlikely To Be A Time That's Favourable To You.

A Pack Of Lemmings Looks Like A Group Of Rugged Individualists Compared With Wall Street When It Gets A Concept In Its Teeth.

There Is No Question That An Important Service Is Provided To Investors By Investment Companies, Investment Advisors, Trust Departments, Etc. This Service Revolves Around The Attainment Of Adequate Diversification, The Preservation Of A Long-term Outlook, The Ease Of Handling Investment Decisions And Mechanics, And Most Importantly, The Avoidance Of The Patently Inferior Investment Techniques Which Seem To Entice Some Individuals.

Let Only Individuals Contribute - With Sensible Limits Per Election. Otherwise, We Are Well On Our Way To Ensuring That A Government Of The Moneyed, By The Moneyed, And For The Moneyed Shall Not Perish From The Earth.

When We Own Portions Of Outstanding Businesses With Outstanding Managements, Our Favorite Holding Period Is Forever.

Investing Money

When Berkshire Hathaway Laid Out Three Billion Dollars For Ge Today, We Didn't Spend It, We Invested It. When The Federal Government Buys The Mortgages, They're Not Spending It, They're Investing It. Now, They're Investing It In Distress Type Assets But They're Buying Them At Distress Prices If They Buy Them At Market. It's The Kind Of Stuff I Love To Do. I Just Don't Have 700 Million. Maybe We Could Go In It Together.

The Optimum Portfolio Depends On The Various Expectations Of Choices Available And The Degree Of Variance In Performance Which Is Tolerable. The Greater The Number Of Selections, The Less Will Be The Average Year-to-year Variation In Actual Versus Expected Results. Also, The Lower Will Be The Expected Results, Assuming Different Choices Have Different Expectations Of Performance.

I Believe The Chance Of Any Event Causing Berkshire To Experience Financial Problems Is Essentially Zero. We Will Always Be Prepared For The Thousand-year Flood; In Fact, If It Occurswe Will Be Selling Life Jackets To The Unprepared.

More Investment Sins Are Probably Committed By Otherwise Quite Intelligent People Because Of "tax Considerations" Than From Any Other Cause. One Of My Friends-a Noted West Coast Philosopher-maintains That A Majority Of Life's Errors Are Caused By Forgetting What One Is Really Trying To Do. This Is Certainly The Case When An Emotionally Supercharged Element Like Taxes Enters The Picture (i Have Another Friend-a Noted East Coast Philosopher Who Says It Isn't The Lack Of Representation He Minds-it's The Taxation).

...i Will Give You Two Pieces Of Advice. Invest As Much In Yourself As You Can; You Are Your Own Best Asset By Far. Then Follow Your Passion; You Want To Be Really Excited To Get Out Of Bed Every Morning.

I Think You Are Out Of Your Mind If You Keep Taking Jobs That You Don't Like Because You Think It Will Look Good On Your Resume. Isn't That A Little Like Saving Up Sex For Your Old Age?

If You Can Eliminate The Government As A 39.6% Partner, Then You Will Be Much Better Off.

If I Got A Chance To Take One Percent Of The Deal Either Way, I Would Make That Bet.

With Enough Insider Information And A Million Dollars, You Can Go Broke In A Year.

So If You Are Evaluating Others (or Yourself!) In The Investment Field, Think Out Some Standards - Apply Them - Interpret Them.

It Isn't Given To Man To Be Able To Run A Financial Institution Where Different Interest-rate Scenarios Will Prevail On All Of That So As To Produce Kind Of Smooth, Regular Earnings From A Very Large Base To Start With.

Problems In A Company Are Like Cockroaches In The Kitchen. You Will Never Find Just One

I Have Three Boxes On My Desk: In, Out, And Too Hard.

Look For 3 Things In A Person. Intelligence, Energy, & Integrity. If They Don't Have The Last One, Don't Even Bother With The First Two.

Wide Diversification Is Only Required When Investors Do Not Understand What They Are Doing.

Trending Author

Zooey Deschanel

Category