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I Bought My First Stock In 1942, In The Summer Of '42. I Was 11 Years Old. And So 75 Years Have Gone By. And I Have Never Known What The Market's Going To Do The Next Day. And That's Not My Game. My Game Is To Decide Whether I'm In The Right Economy, Which America's Definitely Been Ever Since That Time. The Dow Has Gone From 100 To 21,000 During That Time. And No Matter What The Headlines Say, Or Terrible Things Are Happening - We Were Losing The War In The Pacific When I First Bought Stocks.

-Warren Buffett

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I Bought My First

Warren Buffett

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I Bought My First Stock In 1942, In The Summer Of '42. I Was 11 Years Old. And So 75 Years Have Gone By. And I Have Never Known What The Market's Going To Do The Next Day. And That's Not My Game. My Game Is To Decide Whether I'm In The Right Economy, Which America's Definitely Been Ever Since That Time. The Dow Has Gone From 100 To 21,000 During That Time. And No Matter What The Headlines Say, Or Terrible Things Are Happening - We Were Losing The War In The Pacific When I First Bought Stocks.

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If You Want To Shoot Rare, Fast-moving Elephants, You Should Always Carry A Loaded Gun.

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.

It Is More Important To Say "no" To An Opportunity, Than To Say "yes".

People Always Should Know Better. People Don't Get - They Don't Get Smarter About Things That Get As Basic As Greed.

Beware Of Geeks Bearing Formulas.

Forecasts Usually Tell Us More Of The Forecaster Than Of The Forecast

All Day You Wait For The Pitch You Like; Then When The Fielders Are Asleep, You Step Up And Hit It.

Everybody's Got A Different Circle Of Competence. The Important Thing Is Not How Big The Circle Is. The Important Thing Is Staying Inside The Circle.

No Formula In Finance Tells You That The Moat Is 28 Feet Wide And 16 Feet Deep. That's What Drives The Academics Crazy. They Can Compute Standard Deviations And Betas, But They Can't Understand Moats.

There Is No Perfect Mathematical Formula For Pricing A Business.

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.

Is Management Candid With The Shareholders?

A Pin Lies In Wait For Every Bubble. And When The Two Eventually Meet, A New Wave Of Investors Learns Some Very Old Lessons: First, Many In Wall Street (a Community In Which Quality Control Is Not Prized) Will Sell Investors Anything They Will Buy. Second, Speculation Is Most Dangerous When It Looks Easiest.

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.

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.

If You Have A Great Manager, You Want To Pay Him Very Well.

You Do Not Adequately Protect Yourself By Being Half Awake When Other Are Sleeping.

Too Often, A Vast Collection Of Possessions Ends Up Possessing Its Owner.

I Am Not In The Business Of Predicting General Stock Market Of Business Fluctuations. If You Think I Can Do This, Or Think It Is Essential To An Investment Program, You Should Not Be In The Partnership.

The Stock Market Is Designed To Transfer Money From The Active To The Patient.

A Lot Of Great Fortunes In The World Have Been Made By Owning A Single Wonderful Business. If You Understand The Business, You Don't Need To Own Very Many Of Them.

If You Expect To Continue To Purchase Stocks Throughout Your Life, You Should Welcome Price Declines As A Way To Add Stocks More Cheaply To Your Portfolio.

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

Buy Into A Company Because You Want To Own It, Not Because You Want The Stock To Go Up.

Investing Money

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

Investing Money

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.

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.

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

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

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

Investing Money

Investors... Can't Pick Stocks That Are Better Than Average. Stocks Are A Good Thing To Own Over Time. There's Only Two Things You Can Do Wrong: You Can Buy The Wrong Ones, And You Can Buy Or Sell Them At The Wrong Time. And The Truth Is You Never Need To Sell Them.

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

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.

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

I Don't Try And Guess When To Get In And Out Of The Market. I Have Owned Stocks Consistently Since 1942. I Owned The - I Was Buying Stocks The Day Before The Election. I Was Buying The Same Stocks The Day After Election. And If Hillary Had Been Elected, It Would Have Been The Same Thing.

If You're In A Card Game And You Can't Figure Out Who The Patsy Is, You're It.

I Was Lucky To Have The Right Heroes. Tell Me Who Your Heroes Are And I'll Tell You How You'll Turn Out To Be. The Qualities Of The One You Admire Are The Traits That You, With A Little Practice, Can Make Your Own, And That, If Practiced, Will Become Habit Forming.

Trust Is Like The Air We Breathe--when It's Present, Nobody Really Notices; When It's Absent, Everybody Notices.

The Major Asset In This Category Is Gold, Currently A Huge Favorite Of Investors Who Fear Almost All Other Assets, Especially Paper Money (of Whose Value, As Noted, They Are Right To Be Fearful). Gold, However, Has Two Significant Shortcomings, Being Neither Of Much Use Nor Procreative. True, Gold Has Some Industrial And Decorative Utility, But The Demand For These Purposes Is Both Limited And Incapable Of Soaking Up New Production. Meanwhile, If You Own One Ounce Of Gold For An Eternity, You Will Still Own One Ounce At Its End.

In Our View, Though, Investment Students Need Only Two Well-taught Courses-how To Value A Business, And How To Think About Market Prices. Your Goal As An Investor Should Simply Be To Purchase, At A Rational Price, A Part Interest In An Easily-understandable Business Who's Earnings Are Virtually Certain To Be Materially Higher Five, Ten And Twenty Years From Now.

I Bought A Company In The Mid-90s Called Dexter Shoe And Paid $400 Million For It. And It Went To Zero. And I Gave About $400 Million Worth Of Berkshire Stock, Which Is Probably Now Worth $400 Billion. But I've Made Lots Of Dumb Decisions. That's Part Of The Game.

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

Too Often, A Vast Collection Of Possessions Ends Up Possessing Its Owner. The Asset I Most Value, Aside From Health, Is Interesting, Diverse, And Long-standing Friends.

I Never Buy Anything Unless I Can Fill Out On A Piece Of Paper My Reasons. I May Be Wrong, But I Would Know The Answer To That ...i'm Paying $32 Billion Today For The Coca Cola Company Because... If You Can't Answer That Question, You Shouldn't Buy It. If You Can Answer That Question, And You Do It A Few Times, You'll Make A Lot Of Money.

Investing Your Time

Only Buy Something That You'd Be Perfectly Happy To Hold If The Market Shut Down For 10 Years.

If You Can't Communicate And Talk To Other People And Get Across Your Ideas, You're Giving Up Your Potential.

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

What's Hot Today Isn't Likely To Be Hot Tomorrow. The Stock Market Reverts To Fundamental Returns Over The Long Run. Don't Follow The Herd.

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

I Just Don't See Anything Available That Gives Any Reasonable Hope Of Delivering Such A Good Year And I Have No Desire To Grope Around, Hoping To 'get Lucky' With Other People's Money. I Am Not Attuned To This Market Environment, And I Don't Want To Spoil A Decent Record By Trying To Play A Game I Don't Understand Just So I Can Go Out A Hero.

I Would Say The Most Satisfying Thing Actually Is Watching My Three Children Each Pick Up On Their Own Interests And Work Many More Hours Per Week Than Most People That Have Jobs At Trying To Intelligently Give Away That Money In Fields That They Particularly Care About.

We Have Provided Capital Here With A Couple Of Institutions Recently. The Federal Government Did That In The '30s For The Rfc And I Think There Could Well Be A Proper Role For Government In That.

You Should Look At Stocks As Small Pieces Of Business.

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.

All But A Few Of The Organizations Do Not Specifically Promise To Deliver Superior Investment Performance Although It Is Perhaps Not Unreasonable For The Public To Draw Such An Inference From Their Advertised Emphasis On Professional Management.

Buy A Business, Don't Rent Stocks.

It's Us Fun Being A Horse When The Tractor Comes Along, Or The Blacksmith When The Car Comes Along.

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.

The Best Way In My View Is To Just Buy A Low-cost Index Fund And Keep Buying It Regularly Over Time, Because You'll Be Buying Into A Wonderful Industry, Which In Effect Is All Of American Industry... People Ought To Sit Back And Relax And Keep Accumulating Over Time.

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

A Newspaper That Reduces Its Coverage Of The News Important To Its Community Is Certain To Reduce Its Readership As Well

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'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.

Never Invest In A Business You Don't Understand.

An Argument Is Made That There Are Just Too Many Question Marks About The Near Future; Wouldn't It Be Better To Wait Until Things Clear Up A Bit? You Know The Prose: "maintain Buying Reserves Until Current Uncertainties Are Resolved," Etc. Before Reaching For That Crutch, Face Up To Two Unpleasant Facts: The Future Is Never Clear And You Pay A Very High Price For A Cheery Consensus. Uncertainty Actually Is The Friend Of The Buyer Of Long-term Values.

The Best Thing I Did Was Choose The Right Heroes.

Look At Market Fluctuations As Your Friend Rather Than Your Enemy; Profit From Folly Rather Than Participate In It.

Investment Success

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

Successful Investing

It's Class Warfare, My Class Is Winning, But They Shouldn't Be.

In An Inflationary World, A Toll Bridge (like Company) Would Be A Great Thing To Own Because You've Laid Out The Capital Costs. You Built It In Old Dollars And You Don't Have To Keep Replacing It.

Focus On Return On Equity, Not Earnings Per Share.

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.

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.

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.

If Anything, Taxes For The Lower And Middle Class And Maybe Even The Upper-middle Class Should Even Probably Be Cut Further. But I Think That People At The High End - People Like Myself - Should Be Paying A Lot More In Taxes. We Have It Better Than We've Ever Had It.

I Make No Effort To Predict The Course Of General Business Or The Stock Market. Period. However, Currently There Are Practices Snowballing In The Security Markets And Business World Which, While Devoid Of Short Term Predictive Value, Bother Me As To Possible Long Term Consequences.

A Bull Market Is Like Sex. It Feels Best Just Before It Ends.

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

What The Wise Do In The Beginning, Fools Do In The End.

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

Successful Investing Takes Time, Discipline And Patience. No Matter How Great The Talent Or Effort, Some Things Just Take Time: You Can't Produce A Baby In One Month By Getting Nine Women Pregnant.

Investing Money

An Ounce Of Prevention Is Worth A Pound Of Cure Understated.

We Would Do Best In A Market Where Everyone Acted Foolishly.

I Think You'll Have Plenty Of Scrutiny As How The Money's Invested. I Mean, Just Like The Rfc. When The Rfc Operated, People Knew Which Institutions They Were Buying Preferred Stock In. And It Worked Very Well.

The Stockmarket Is A Semi-psychotic Creature Given To Extremes Of Elation And Despair.

Occasionally, A Man Must Rise Above Principles.

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.

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

Investing Money

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.

You Do Things When The Opportunities Come Along. I've Had Periods In My Life When I've Had A Bundle Of Ideas Come Along, And I've Had Long Dry Spells. If I Get An Idea Next Week, I'll Do Something. If Not, I Won't Do A Damn Thing.

Investing Money

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

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

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

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.

Making Money Isn't The Backbone Of Our Guiding Purpose; It Is The By-product Of Our Guiding Purpose.

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

Does The Business Have Favourable Long Term Prospects?

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

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.

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.

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.

We Continue To Make More Money When Snoring Than When Active.

If You Don't Know Jewelry, Know The Jeweler.

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

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

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'?

People Who Watch Their Weight, Golf Scores, And Fuel Bills Seem To Shun Quantitative Evaluation Of Their Investment Management Skills Although It Involves The Most Important Client In The World-themselves.

When You Combine Ignorance And Leverage, You Get Some Pretty Interesting Results.

Investing Money

Invest In As Much Of Yourself As You Can, You Are Your Own Biggest Asset By Far.

I Like To Go For Cinches. I Like To Shoot Fish In A Barrel. But I Like To Do It After The Water Has Run Out.

We Don't Read Other People's Opinions. We Want To Get The Facts, And Then Think.

Emotional Makeup Is More Important Than Technical Skill

I Mean There Is No Capital Requirements To It Or Anything Of The Sort. And Basically, I Said There Were Possibly Financial Weapons Of Mass Destruction, And They Had Them. They Destroyed Aig. They Certainly Contributed To The Destruction Of Bear Sterns And Lehman. Although Lehman Had Other Problems, Too.

Mass Destruction

Our Future Rates Of Gain Will Fall Far Short Of Those Achieved In The Past. Berkshire's Capital Base Is Now Simply Too Large To Allow Us To Earn Truly Outsized Returns. If You Believe Otherwise, You Should Consider A Career In Sales But Avoid One In Mathematics.

The Value Of A Business Is The Cash It's Going To Produce In The Future.

Every Day That Goes By, I Mean, If You Don't React To Pearl Harbor For A Week Or Two Weeks Or Three Weeks, You're Behind In The War That You Otherwise Would Have Fought.

We Have Embraced The 21st Century By Entering Such Cutting-edge Industries As Brick, Carpet, Insulation And Paint. Try To Control Your Excitement.

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

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

I Think Confidence Will Come Back.

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.

When The President Of The United States Goes Out At, You Know, 8:00 O'clock In The Morning And Then His Own Party Votes Gets Him 2 To 1 In The House, You Know That Somehow A Message Isn't Getting Out. It Takes Real Leadership.

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.

I Think People - What People Want To Do Is Make [economy] Get Worse.

It Takes 150 Years To Build An Investment Bank And Only Five Minutes To Convince You To Sell Me Preferred Stock In It At A 10% Interest Rate.

I Mean, Hank Paulson Is In There [ Treasury] At The Wrong Time, Probably Shouldn't Have Taken The Job. He's A Friend Of Mine. But He Knows Markets, He Knows Corporations' Work, He Knows Money, And He's Got The Interests Of The Country At Heart.

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

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.

If You Hit A Hole In One Every Hole, You Wouldn’t Play Golf For Very Long.

The Happiest People Do Not Necessarily Have The Best Things. They Simply Appreciate The Things They Have.

The Best Business Returns Are Usually Achieved By Companies That Are Doing Something Quite Similar Today To What They Were Doing Five Or Ten Years Ago.

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

When You Build A Bridge, You Insist That It Can Carry 30,000 Pounds, But You Only Drive 10,000-pound Trucks Across It. And That Same Principle Works In Investing.

When Investing, Pessimism Is Your Friend, Euphoria The Enemy.

One Of The Ironies Of The Stock Market Is The Emphasis On Activity. Brokers, Using Terms Such As 'marketability' And 'liquidity,' Sing The Praises Of Companies With High Share Turnover... But Investors Should Understand That What Is Good For The Croupier Is Not Good For The Customer. A Hyperactive Stock Market Is The Pick Pocket Of Enterprise.

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.

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.

In Our View, Derivatives Are Financial Weapons Of Mass Destruction Carrying Dangers That, While Latent, Are Potentially Lethal.

Mass Destruction

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

In The Financial Markets I Find It Easy To Predict What Will Happen And Very Difficult To Predict When It Will Happen. I Think That Things Were Clear During The Bubble As To What Would Happen Eventually.

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

Investing Money

We Simply Attempt To Be Fearful When Others Are Greedy And To Be Greedy Only When Others Are Fearful.

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

Traditional Wisdom Is Long On Tradition And Short On Wisdom.

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.

We Need A Tax System That Essentially Takes Very Good Care Of The People Who Just Really Aren't As Well Adapted To The Market System But Are Nevertheless Doing Useful Things In The Society.

It Makes A Difference Who The Treasury Secretary Is.

Making A Difference

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.

Someone Is Sitting In The Shade Today Because Someone Planted A Tree A Long Time Ago.

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.

The Most Dangerous Distractions Are The Ones You Love, But That Don’t Love You Back.

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

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.

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

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.

Like I Say, I Don't Think It'll Be Done Perfectly. Maybe We'll End Up With A Little Bit Better [economy] System.

The Big Question About How People Behave Is Whether They've Got An Inner Scorecard Or An Outer Scorecard. It Helps If You Can Be Satisfied With An Inner Scorecard.

The Wise Man Once Said Invest Young

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

You Can't Buy What Is Popular And Do Well.

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

They Say The Chains Of Habit Are Too Light To Be Felt Until They Are Too Heavy To Be Broken. The Chains You Put Around Yourself Now Have Enormous Consequences As You Go Through Life.

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 Most Important Quality For An Investor Is Temperament, Not Intellect.

I Would Push Purchasing Power - You Push Out $1,000 Of Purchasing To Those People, It's Going To Get - It's Going To Get Spent. And It Needs To Be Spent. They Need It. And It Should Come, To Some Extent, From Guys Like Me.

The Key To Success Is Emotional Stability.

They [goverment] Take From The Woman Who Comes In And Takes The Wastebaskets Out.

Growth And Value Investing Are Joined At The Hip.

In Economics, You Always Want To Ask 'and Then What?'

Things You Like To Do Should Be A Hobby Of Yours, But Things The World Does Should Be A Business Of Yours.

I'm The Luckiest Guy In The World In Terms Of What I Do For A Living. No One Can Tell Me To Do Things I Don't Believe In Or Things I Think Are Stupid.

My Wealth Has Come From A Combination Of Living In America, Some Lucky Genes, And Compound Interest.

We Make Investment Decisions Based On Our Evaluation Of The Most Profitable Combination Of Probabilities.

To Invest Successfully, You Need Not Understand Beta, Efficient Markets, Modern Portfolio Theory, Option Pricing Or Emerging Markets. You May, In Fact, Be Better Off Knowing Nothing Of These. That, Of Course, Is Not The Prevailing View At Most Business Schools, Whose Finance Curriculum Tends To Be Dominated By Such Subjects. In Our View, Though, Investment Students Need Only Two Well-taught Courses - How To Value A Business, And How To Think About Market Prices.

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?

If You Expect To Be A Net Saver During The Next 5 Years, Should You Hope For A Higher Or Lower Stock Market During That Period? Many Investors Get This One Wrong. Even Though They Are Going To Be Net Buyers Of Stocks For Many Years To Come, They Are Elated When Stock Prices Rise And Depressed When They Fall. This Reaction Makes No Sense. 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.

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

Charlie And I Have A Number Of Filters That Things Have To Get Through Before We'll Think About Them.

What An Investor Needs Is The Ability To Correctly Evaluate Selected Businesses. Note That Word “selected”: You Don't Have To Be An Expert On Every Company, Or Even Many. You Only Have To Be Able To Evaluate Companies Within Your Circle Of Competence. The Size Of That Circle Is Not Very Important; Knowing Its Boundaries, However, Is Vital.

America Should Stand For More Than Just Wealth.

Never Lie Under Any Circumstances.

I Wouldn’t Mind Going To Jail If I Had Three Cellmates Who Played Bridge

The Capital Gains Tax Is 15 Percent Now. So I Sit There In My Office And I Make A Lot Of Money By Capital Gains, And I Pay 15 Percent, And I Pay No Payroll Tax On It.

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.

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

We Rarely Use Much Debt And, When We Do, We Attempt To Structure It On A Long-term Fixed Rate Basis. We Will Reject Interesting Opportunities Rather Than Over-leverage Our Balance Sheet. This Conservatism Has Penalized Our Results But It Is The Only Behavior That Leaves Us Comfortable, Considering Our Fiduciary Obligations To Policyholders, Depositors, Lenders And The Many Equity Holders Who Have Committed Unusually Large Portions Of Their Net Worth To Our Care.

Failing Conventionally Is The Route To Go; As A Group, Lemmings May Have A Rotten Image, But No Individual Lemming Has Ever Received Bad Press

The Best Investment You Can Make Is In Yourself.

Investment Success

If You Can't Read The Scoreboard. You Don't Know The Score. If You Don't Know The Score, You Can't Tell The Winners From The Losers.

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

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.

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

Learn From Your Mistakes

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

The Approach And Strategies Are Very Similar In That You Gather All The Information You Can And Then Keep Adding To That Base Of Information As Things Develop. You Do Whatever The Probabilities Indicated Based On The Knowledge That You Have At That Time, But You Are Always Willing To Modify Your Behaviour Or Your Approach As You Get New Information. In Bridge, You Behave In A Way That Gets The Best From Your Partner. And In Business, You Behave In The Way That Gets The Best From Your Managers And Your Employees.

At Berkshire, I Both Initiate And Monitor Every Derivatives Contract On Our Books ... If Berkshire Ever Gets In Trouble, It Will Be My Fault. It Will Not Be Because Of The Misjudgments Made By A Risk Committee Or Chief Risk Officer.

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

If Principles Can Become Dated, They're Not Principles.

I’ve Worked In An Economy That Rewards Someone Who Saves The Lives Of Others On A Battlefield With A Medal, Rewards A Great Teacher With Thank-you Notes From Parents, But Rewards Those Who Can Detect The Mispricing Of Securities With Sums Reaching Into The Billions.

Very Successful People Say No To Almost Everything.

Investment Success

I Read Annual Reports Of The Company I'm Looking At And I Read The Annual Reports Of The Competitors - That Is The Main Source Of Material.

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