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[economy] Is Flat On The Floor, And The Paramedics Have Arrived. And They Shouldn't Argue About Whether They Put The Resuscitation Equipment A Quarter Of An Inch This Way Or A Quarter Of An Inch This Way, Or They Shouldn't Start Criticizing The Patient, Because He Didn't Have A Blood Pressure Test Or Something Like That. They Should Do What's Needed Right Now.

-Warren Buffett

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[economy] Is Flat On

Warren Buffett

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[economy] Is Flat On The Floor, And The Paramedics Have Arrived. And They Shouldn't Argue About Whether They Put The Resuscitation Equipment A Quarter Of An Inch This Way Or A Quarter Of An Inch This Way, Or They Shouldn't Start Criticizing The Patient, Because He Didn't Have A Blood Pressure Test Or Something Like That. They Should Do What's Needed Right Now.

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

Anything Can Happen Anytime In Markets. And No Advisor, Economist, Or Tv Commentator-and Definitely Not Charlie Nor I-can Tell You When Chaos Will Occur. Market Forecasters Will Fill Your Ear But Will Never Fill Your Wallet.

Other Guys Read Playboy. I Read Annual Reports.

The Fundamental Basis Of Above-average Performance In The Long Run Is Sustainable Competitive Advantage.

You Have To Turn Over A Lot Of Rocks To Find Those Little Anomalies. You Have To Find The Companies That Are Off The Map - Way Off The Map.

I Do Not Believe In Inheriting Your Position In Society Based On Which Womb You Come From... I Think A Rich Person Should Leave His Children Enough So They Can Do Anything, But Not Enough So They Can Do Nothing.

Wall Street Is The Only Place That People Ride To In A Rolls Royce To Get Advice From Those Who Take The Subway.

Investing Money

Most People Get Interested In Stocks When Everyone Else Is. The Time To Get Interested Is When No One Else Is. You Can't Buy What Is Popular And Do Well.

Investing Your Time

Cultivate Curiosity And Strive To Become A Little Wiser Every Day.

The Critical Investment Factor Is Determining The Intrinsic Value Of A Business And Paying A Fair Or Bargain Price.

So Some Guy May Know How To Make Money In Cocoa Beans, But I Don't So I Just Let Him Have That. But It's Got To Be Something I Understand. It's Got To Be A Business With Fundamentally Good Economics. It's Got To Be A Management That I Like And Trust And Admire. And It's Got To Be A Price That Makes Sense.

Confidence Is Key. You're Not Going To Put Your Money - You're Not Going To Leave Your Money With Me Unless You're Confident I'm Going To Give It Back To You.

Confidence Is Key

In A Commodity Business, It's Very Hard To Be Smarter Than Your Dumbest Competitor.

Would You Rather Be The World's Greatest Lover, But Have Everyone Think You're The World's Worst Lover? Or Would You Rather Be The World's Worst Lover But Have Everyone Think You're The World's Greatest Lover? Now, That's An Interesting Question.

I Mean, You May Be Very Mad At Some Guy That Walked Away With A Huge Golden Parachute, But That Really Isn't The Important Thing.

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.

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.

When I Take A Look At A Company's Annual Report, If I Don't Understand It, They Don't Want Me To Understand It.

Stocks Are The Only Thing That People Are Happy To Buy When The Price Goes Up.

We Don't Have To Be Smarter Than The Rest. We Have To Be More Disciplined Than The Rest.

Successful Investing

There Are Three Important Principles To Graham's Approach. [the First Is To Look At Stocks As Fractional Shares Of A Business, Which] Gives You An Entirely Different View Than Most People Who Are In The Market. [the Second Principle Is The Margin-of-safety Concept, Which] Gives You The Competitive Advantage. [the Third Is Having A True Investor's Attitude Toward The Stock Market, Which] If You Have That Attitude, You Start Out Ahead Of 99 Percent Of All The People Who Are Operating In The Stock Market - It's An Enormous Advantage.

We've Got All The Ingredients For A Sensational Future.

If I Eat 2,700 Calories A Day, A Quarter Of That Is Coca-cola.

Only Those Who Will Be Sellers Of Equities In The Near Future Should Be Happy At Seeing Stocks Rise. Prospective Purchasers Should Much Prefer Sinking Prices.

I Mean, They Were Getting The Mortgage Of Some Guy In Omaha, You Know, Securitized A Couple Of Times. I Mean He Had All These - They Had All These Types From Wall Street, You Know, And They Had Advanced Degrees, And They Look Very Alert, And They Came With These - They Came With These Things That Said Gamma And Alpha And Sigma And All That. And All I Can Say Is Beware Of Geeks, You Know, Bearing Formulas. They've Heard That In Europe.

Forecasts May Tell You A Great Deal About The Forecaster; They Tell You Nothing About The Future.

Our Approach Is Very Much Profiting From Lack Of Change Rather Than From Change.

Investing Money

I Have No Views As To Where It Will Be, But The One Thing I Can Tell You Is It Won't Do Anything Between Now And Then Except Look At You. Whereas, You Know, Coca-cola (ko) Will Be Making Money, And I Think Wells Fargo (wfc) Will Be Making A Lot Of Money And There Will Be A Lot - And It's A Lot - It's A Lot Better To Have A Goose That Keeps Laying Eggs Than A Goose That Just Sits There And Eats Insurance And Storage And A Few Things Like That.

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

Investors Making Purchases In An Overheated Market Need To Recognize That It May Often Take An Extended Period For The Value Of Even An Outstanding Company To Catch Up With The Price They Paid.

A Fool And His Money Are Soon Invited Everywhere.

Returns Decrease As Motion Increases.

Take Wrigley's Chewing Gum. I Don't Think The Internet Is Going To Change How People Chew Gum.

The Only Question Is Whether You’re Going To Do It Today Or Tomorrow. If You Keep Saying You’re Going To Do It Tomorrow, You’ll Never Do It. You Have To Get On It Today.

You Can't Make A Good Deal With A Bad Person.

Gold Has Two Significant Shortcomings, Being Neither Of Much Use Nor Procreative.

It’s Not That I Want Money. It’s The Fun Of Making Money And Watching It Grow.

You Don't Need To Have Extraordinary Effort To Achieve Extraordinary Results. You Just Need To Do The Ordinary, Everyday Things Exceptionally Well.

Everyday Things

Of One Thing Be Certain: If A Ceo Is Enthused About A Particularly Foolish Acquisition, Both His Internal Staff And His Outside Advisors Will Come Up With Whatever Projections Are Needed To Justify His Stance. Only In Fairy Tales Are Emperors Told That They Are Naked.

There Is Nothing Like Writing To Force You To Think And Get Your Thoughts Straight.

I'm Sitting With Six And A Half Billion Dollars We're Going To Use To Close The Mars-wrigley Deal On October 6. I've Got To Hand Over That Six And A Half Billion On October 6. Now, I Have To Be Very Careful About Who I Leave It In Between Now And Then, Because They're Expecting That He Show Up.

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

Managers Thinking About Accounting Issues Should Never Forget One Of Abraham Lincoln's Favorite Riddles: How Many Legs Does A Dog Have, If You Call A Tail A Leg? The Answer: Four, Because Calling A Tail A Leg Doesn't Make It A Leg.

As An Investor With Small Capital, One Should Prefer Businesses That Have High Returns On Capital And That Require Little Incremental Investment To Grow.

We've Had Public Companies In The Past In That Business And They Bleed. We've Got A Lot More Blood Than They Do.

Personally, I Really Hope I Can Treat Everyone Equally. I Think I Have Done A Pretty Good Job So Far But I Know I Can Do It Better.

You Could Take All The Gold That's Ever Been Mined, And It Would Fill A Cube 67 Feet In Each Direction. For What That's Worth At Current Gold Prices, You Could Buy All -- Not Some -- All Of The Farmland In The United States. Plus, You Could Buy 10 Exxon Mobils, Plus Have $1 Trillion Of Walking-around Money. Or You Could Have A Big Cube Of Metal. Which Would You Take? Which Is Going To Produce More Value?

We Need To Throw The Resources At This That Are Necessary. But Like I Say, We Are Not Spending Money. I Mean, If We Buy These Assets Intelligently, The United States Treasury Will Make Money. I Mean, It's Borrowing Money. It's Just A Few Percent A Year.

Somebody's Buying These Treasury Bills At 1/20th Of One Percent. Consuming About $2 Billion A Day Of Goods And Services Beyond What We're Producing. In Other Words, The Rest Of The World Sends About $2 Billion A Day Net Of Something.we Got To Send Them Something In Return, Don't We. So We Send Them Little Pieces Of Paper.

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.

It Takes 20 Years To Build A Reputation And Five Minutes To Ruin It. If You Think About That, You'll Do Things Differently.

Ben's Mr. Market Allegory May Seem Out-of-date In Today's Investment World, In Which Most Professionals And Academicians Talk Of Efficient Markets, Dynamic Hedging And Betas. Their Interest In Such Matters Is Understandable, Since Techniques Shrouded In Mystery Clearly Have Value To The Purveyor Of Investment Advice. After All, What Witch Doctor Has Ever Achieved Fame And Fortune By Simply Advising 'take Two Aspirins'?

I Have No Idea On Timing. It’s Easier To Tell What Will Happen Than When It Will Happen. I Would Say That What Is Going On In Terms Of Trade Policy Is Going To Have Very Important Consequences.

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.

The Patient That's On The Floor With The Cardiac Arrest Is Not Wall Street. It's The American Economy.

When You Get To My Age, You’ll Measure Your Success In Life By How Many Of The People You Want To Have Love You Actually Do Love You. That’s The Ultimate Test Of How You’ve Lived Your Life.

The Most Important Thing In Terms Of Your Circle Of Competence Is Not How Large The Area Of It Is, But How Well You've Defined The Perimeter.

The Most Important Investment You Can Make Is In Yourself. Very Few People Get Anything Like Their Potential Horsepower Translated Into The Actual Horsepower Of Their Output In Life. Potential Exceeds Realization For Many People...the Best Asset Is Your Own Self. You Can Become To An Enormous Degree The Person You Want To Be.

It's A Good Idea To Review Past Mistakes Before Committing New Ones.

Never Invest In A Business You Can't Understand

One’s Objective Should Be To Get It Right, Get It Quick, Get It Out And Get It Over. Your Problem Won’t Improve With Age.

You Don't Need To Be A Rocket Scientist. Investing Is Not A Game Where The Guy With The 160 Iq Beats The Guy With 130 Iq.

Investment Success

The American Economy Is Going To Do Fine. But It Won't Do Fine Every Year And Every Week And Every Month. I Mean, If You Don't Believe That, Forget About Buying Stocks Anyway... It's A Positive-sum Game, Long Term. And The Only Way An Investor Can Get Killed Is By High Fees Or By Trying To Outsmart The Market.

Do Not Save What Is Left After Spending, But Spend What Is Left After Saving.

Never Depend On Single Income. Make Investment To Create A Second Source.

I Think It Will Get Moving Faster. I Mean Once You Get It Off The - Once Credit Flows - Now The Recession Is Going To Get Worse.

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

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

Is Management Candid With The Shareholders?

Credit Worthiness Is Like Virginity, It Can Be Preserved But Not Restored Very Easily, So It Is Crazy To Play Around With It.

I've Argued With The Senators And Congressmen I've Talked To. You Don't Want To Be Too Little Too Late. If You Buy Them At The Right Price, You May Be Buying Two Trillion Of Face Value.

I Know That Congress Will Do The Right Thing.

What Motivates Most Gold Purchasers Is Their Belief That The Ranks Of The Fearful Will Grow ... As 'bandwagon' Investors Join Any Party, They Create Their Own Truth - For A While.

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

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.

In The End, Alchemy, Whether It Is Metallurgical Or Financial, Fails. A Base Business Can Not Be Transformed Into A Golden Business By Tricks Of Accounting Or Capital Structure. The Man Claiming To Be A Financial Alchemist May Become Rich. But Gullible Investors Rather Than Business Achievements Will Usually Be The Source Of His Wealth.

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.

Our Leaders Have Asked For “shared Sacrifice.” But When They Did The Asking, They Spared Me. I Checked With My Mega-rich Friends To Learn What Pain They Were Expecting. They, Too, Were Left Untouched.

The Purpose Of Life Is To Be Loved By As Many People As Possible Among Those You Want To Have Love You

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

Investing Money

...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 What People Understand There Probably - Well, They Were Hoping The Private Sector Would Do It [rescuing Aig ].

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

Do Not Put All Your Eggs In One Basket.

Investment Success

When Somebody Makes It Very Easy For You To Do It By Saying You Don't Really Have To Put Up My Money, You Can Lie About Your Income A Little, Or We'll Give You 100 Percent Mortgage, You're Going To Do It, Because Everybody That's Done It Has Been Proven Right. You Have Social Tools, And You're Going To Feel Like An Idiot If You Didn't Do It, Because The House Cost More.

When We Really Sit Back With A Smile On Our Face Is When We Run Into A Situation We Can Understand, Where The Facts Are Ascertainable And Clear, And The Course Of Action Obvious.

I Have This Complicated Procedure I Go Through Every Morning, Which Is To Look In The Mirror And Decide What I'm Going To Do. And I Feel At That Point, Everybody's Had Their Say.

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.

In The Great Majority Of Cases We Simply Do Not Know Enough About The Industry Or Company To Come To Sensible Judgments-in That Situation We Pass.

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

He Must Never Forget Charlie's Plea: Tell Me Where I'm Going To Die, So I'll Never Go There.

The Stock Market Is A No-called-strike Game. You Don’t Have To Swing At Everything – You Can Wait For Your Pitch.

I Really Like My Life. I've Arranged My Life So That I Can Do What I Want.

It Will Be Good For Us In The Long Run, And I Mean There Are, You Know, Six And A Half Billion People In This World. And It's Great For 300 Million To Keep Enjoying More And More Property, But I Think It's Terrific If, You Know, The Remainder Do.

The Best Asset Is Your Own Self. You Can Become To An Enormous Degree The Person You Want To Be

Enjoy Your Work And Work For Whom You Admire.

Possessing A Powerful Worldwide Brand Is Essential For Sustained Success.

Two Rules: 1. Preserve The Principal 2. When In Doubt, See Rule #1.

[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.

The Secret Is To Find What You Love To Do.i Mean, I Tell The Students Look For The Job That You Would Take If You Didn't Need A Job. I Mean, It's That Simple. And I Was Lucky Enough To Find It Very Early In Life. And Then The Second Thing Is To Have People Around You That Make Feel Good Every Day, And Make You A Better Person Than You Otherwise Would Be.

It Makes No Difference To A Widow With Her Savings In A 5 Percent Passbook Account Whether She Pays 100 Percent Income Tax On Her Interest Income During A Period Of Zero Inflation Or Pays No Income Tax During Years Of 5 Percent Inflation. Either Way, She Is 'taxed' In A Manner That Leaves Her No Real Income Whatsoever. Any Money She Spends Comes Right Out Of Capital. She Would Find Outrageous A 100 Percent Income Tax But Doesn't Seem To Notice That 5 Percent Inflation Is The Economic Equivalent.

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

A Ceo's Behavior Has A Huge Impact On Managers Down The Line.

If You Want To Soar Like An Eagle In Life, You Can't Be Flocking With The Turkeys.

Focus On Your Customers And Lead Your People As Though Their Lives Depend On Your Success.

If You Don’t Feel Comfortable Making A Rough Estimate Of The Asset’s Future Earnings, Just Forget It And Move On. No One Has The Ability To Evaluate Every Investment Possibility. But Omniscience Isn’t Necessary; You Only Need To Understand The Actions You Undertake.

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

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

I'll Bring My Tax Returns; You Bring Yours. I'll Meet You Anytime Anywhere.

Mark Zuckerberg Will Be A Hero To Many Young Entrepreneurs 20 Years From Now. Bill Gates Will Be A Hero To Others, And They Will Look To Those [people] Like I Read Books When I Was In My Teens About Rockefeller Or Carnegie.

Young Entrepreneurs

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

It's Never Paid To Bet Against America.

When People Tell Me They've Learned From Experience, I Tell Them The Trick Is To Learn From Other People's Experience.

We Will Prosper Or Suffer In Controlled Investments In Relation To The Operating Performances Of Our Businesses - We Will Not Attempt To Profit By Playing Various Games In The Securities Markets.

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 Idea That You Try To Time Purchases Based On What You Think Business Is Going To Do In The Next Year Or Two, I Think That's The Greatest Mistake That Investors Make Because It's Always Uncertain. People Say It's A Time Of Uncertainty. It Was Uncertain On September 10th, 2001, People Just Didn't Know It. It's Uncertain Every Single Day. So Take Uncertainty As Part Of Being Involved In Investment At All. But Uncertainty Can Be Your Friend. I Mean, When People Are Scared, They Pay Less For Things. We Try To Price. We Don't Try To Time At All.

In The World Of Business, The People Who Are Most Successful Are Those Who Are Doing What They Love.

Investment Success

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.

A Public-opinion Poll Is No Substitute For Thought.

The Secret To Happiness Is Having Low Expectations.

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.

There Is No Staff. I Make All The Investment Decisions And I Do All My Own Analysis.

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

If We Have A Strength, It Is In Recognizing When We Are Operating Well Within Our Circle Of Competence And When We Are Approaching The Perimeter.

What's Nice About Investing Is You Don't Have To Swing At Every Pitch.

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.

Cash Combined With Courage In A Time Of Crisis Is Priceless.

If I Knew Where I Was Going To Want To Live The Next Five Or 10 Years I Would Buy A Home And I'd Finance It With A 30-year Mortgage... It's A Terrific Deal.

The (stock) Market Is There Only As A Reference Point To See If Anybody Is Offering To Do Anything Foolish. When We Invest In Stocks, We Invest In Businesses.

A Lot Of People Disagree With Me On This, I Believe In Mark To Market.

Our Goal Is To Find An Outstanding Business At A Sensible Price, Not A Mediocre Business At A Bargain Price.

What Could Be More Advantageous In An Intellectual Contest - Whether It Be Chess, Bridge, Or Stock Selection - Than To Have Opponents Who Have Been Taught That Thinking Is A Waste Of Energy?

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

Interest Rates Are To Asset Prices What Gravity Is To The Apple. When There Are Low Interest Rates, There Is A Very Low Gravitational Pull On Asset Prices.

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

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.

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

You Have No Ability, If You're A Financial Institution And You're Threatened With Criminal Prosecution, You Have No Ability To Negotiate.

Investors Should Remember That Excitement And Expenses Are Their Enemies.

Investing Money

Investment Success

You Will Be Right, Over The Course Of Many Transactions, If Your Hypotheses Are Correct, Your Facts Are Correct, And Your Reasoning Is Correct. True Conservatism Is Only Possible Through Knowledge And Reason.

My Idea Of A Group Decision Is To Look In The Mirror.

The U.s. Treasury Has Got Borrowing Costs Like Nobody Else Has.

How Do You Beat Bobby Fischer? You Play Him At Any Game But Chess. I Try To Stay In Games Where I Have An Edge.

Working With People Who Cause Your Stomach To Churn Seems Much Like Marrying For Money - Probably A Bad Idea Under Any Circumstances, But Absolute Madness If You Are Already Rich.

Writing Checks To The Irs That Include Strings Of Zeros Does Not Bother Me ... Overall, We Feel Extraordinarily Lucky To Have Been Dealt A Hand In Life That Enables Us To Write Large Checks To The Government Rather Than One Requiring The Government To Regularly Write Checks To Us-say, Because We Are Disabled Or Unemployed.

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.

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

You Have To Understand Accounting And You Have To Understand The Nuances Of Accounting. It's The Language Of Business And It's An Imperfect Language, But Unless You Are Willing To Put In The Effort To Learn Accounting - How To Read And Interpret Financial Statements - You Really Shouldn't Select Stocks Yourself

A Prediction About The Direction Of The Stock Market Tells You Nothing About Where Stocks Are Headed, But A Whole Lot About The Person Doing The Predicting.

Knowing The Edge Of Your Competency Is Important. If You Think You Know More Than You Do, You Will Get In Trouble.

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.

You Have To Be Able To Communicate In Life And Probably Schools Underemphasize That. If You Can't Talk To People Or Write, You're Giving Up Your Potential.

In That, We Agreed With Andrew Carnegie, Who Said That Huge Fortunes That Flow In Large Part From Society Should In Large Part Be Returned To Society. In My Case, The Ability To Allocate Capital Would Have Had Little Utility Unless I Lived In A Rich, Populous Country In Which Enormous Quantities Of Marketable Securities Were Traded And Were Sometimes Ridiculously Mispriced. And Fortunately For Me, That Describes The U.s. In The Second Half Of The Last Century.

Enormous Quantities

The Real Fortunes In This Country Have Been Made By People Who Have Been Right About The Business They Invested In, And Not Right About The Timing Of The Stock Market.

The Greatest Investment A Young Person Can Make Is In Their Own Education, In Their Own Mind. Because Money Comes And Goes. Relationships Come And Go. But What You Learn Once Stays With You Forever.

We Still Find Very Few [stocks] That Even Mildly Interest Us. That Dismal Fact Is Testimony To The Insanity Of Valuations Reached During The Great Bubble. Unfortunately, The Hangover May Prove To Be Proportional To The Binge.

Investing In A Market Where People Believe In Efficiency Is Like Playing Bridge With Someone Who Has Been Told It Doesn't Do Any Good To Look At The Cards.

You Can't Help Some Increase From This Point. I Don't Want Any Viewer To Go Away Think A Magic Wand Exists In Congress. So They're Going To See Some More Bad News. But If We Do This, We're Doing The Right Thing.

We Do Not View The Company Itself As The Ultimate Owner Of Our Business Assets But Instead View The Company As A Conduit Through Which Our Shareholders Own Assets.

Investment Students Need Only Two Well-taught Courses - How To Value A Business And How To Think About Market Prices

Nothing Sedates Rationality Like Large Doses Of Effortless Money.

Investing Money

You Can't Produce A Baby In One Month By Getting Nine Women Pregnant.

Investing Money

I Insist On A Lot Of Time Being Spent, Almost Every Day, To Just Sit And Think. That Is Very Uncommon In American Business.

Over The Years, Charlie [munger, Berkshire Hathaway Vice Chairman] And I Have Observed Many Accounting-based Frauds Of Staggering Size. Few Of The Perpetrators Have Been Punished; Many Have Not Even Been Censured. It Has Been Far Safer To Steal Large Sums With Pen Than Small Sums With A Gun.

Money Will Always Flow Toward Opportunity, And There Is An Abundance Of That In America.

It's Not Debt Per Say That Overwhelms An Individual Corporation Or Country. Rather It Is A Continuous Increase In Debt In Relation To Income That Causes Trouble.

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

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

Take The Probability Of Loss Times The Amount Of Possible Loss From The Probability Of Gain Times The Amount Of Possible Gain. That Is What We're Trying To Do. It's Imperfect, But That's What It's All About.

The Smarter The Journalists Are, The Better Off Society Is.

Our Policy Is To Concentrate Holdings. We Try To Avoid Buying A Little Of This Or That When We Are Only Lukewarm About The Business Or Its Price. When We Are Convinced As To Attractiveness, We Believe In Buying Worthwhile Amounts.

Investing Is Forgoing Consumption Now In Order To Have The Ability To Consume More At A Later Date.

The Same Things Happen To Quite An Extent Around The Globe. I Mean, The European Banks Were Doing What The American Banks Were.

I Think I Could Make You Fifty Percent A Year On One Million Dollars. No, I Know I Could. I Guarantee That.

Guarantees That

I'm Putting All My Money In The Chinese Toy Market.

It's Far Better To Buy A Wonderful Company At A Fair Price Than A Fair Company At A Wonderful Price.

Investing Money

I've Read About All The Sales Today. If You're An Auto Dealer, You're Feeling It. If You're A Furniture Retailer Like We Are, You're Feeling It. If You're A Jewelry Retailer, You're Feeling It. I Know Some Of These Businesses Because We're In Them. Yeah, It's Being Felt, But It Will Be Felt Big Time More If We Don't Do Something About It, What's Going On.

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

I May Have More Money Than You, But Money Doesn't Make The Difference. If There Is Any Difference Between You And Me, It May Simply Be That I Get Up And Have A Chance To Do What I Love To Do, Every Day. If You Learn Anything From Me, This Is The Best Advice I Can Give You.

There Are 309 Million People Out There That Are Trying To Improve Their Lot In Life. And We've Got A System That Allows Them To Do It.

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 Obligation Of A Society As Prosperous As Ours Is To Figure Out How Nobody Gets Left Too Far Behind.

Opportunities Come Infrequently. When It Rains Gold, Put Out The Bucket, Not The Thimble.

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.

When 40 Billion Of Treasury Bills Are Sold Like, Seven Day Treasury Bills, At A Yield Of 1/20th Of One Percent, That Means The Whole Country Is Basically At The Point Virtually, Or A Lot Of The Country Is At The Point Of Putting The Money Under The Mattress.

Today People Who Hold Cash Equivalents Feel Comfortable. They Shouldn't. They Have Opted For A Terrible Long-term Asset, One That Pays Virtually Nothing And Is Certain To Depreciate In Value.

I Know The Country Works Extremely Well. You Know, But When It Isn't Clogged Up.

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

Intrinsic Value Can Be Defined Simply: It Is The Discounted Value Of The Cash That Can Be Taken Out Of A Business During Its Remaining Life.

Intrinsic Value

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

The .350 Hitter Expects, And Also Deserves, A Big Payoff For His Performance - Even If He Plays For A Cellar-dwelling Team. And A .150 Hitter Should Get No Reward - Even If He Plays For A Pennant Winner.

In The Long Run Managements Stressing Accounting Appearance Over Economic Substance Usually Achieve Little Of Either.

[w]e Think The Very Term 'value Investing' Is Redundant. What Is 'investing' If It Is Not The Act Of Seeking Value At Least Sufficient To Justify The Amount Paid? 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 Labeled Speculation (which Is Neither Illegal, Immoral Nor -- In Our View -- Financially Fattening).

I Always Say That In Investing You Want To Buy Stock In A Company That Has A Business That's So Good That An Idiot Can Run It, Because Sooner Or Later One Will. We Have A Country Like That.

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).

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

The Rich Are Always Going To Say That, You Know, Just Give Us More Money And We'll Go Out And Spend More And Then It Will All Trickle Down To The Rest Of You. But That Has Not Worked The Last 10 Years, And I Hope The American Public Is Catching On.

At This Point, When Treasury Bills, Seven Day Treasury Bills At 1/20th Of One Percent, It's Not Because People Want To Earn 1/20th Of One Percent, It's Because They Trust The Fact The Treasury Will Give It Back To Them Next Week.

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

If I Were The Treasury Secretary Or Head Of The Fed, You Know, I Would Try To Scare The Hell The Out Of The Private Sector And Say, You Better Save This Because You're Going Down With The Ship.

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