Background Image

...

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.

-Warren Buffett

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

I Mean, We'll Be

Warren Buffett

...

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.

Views: 3

Topic

More From Warren Buffett

The Business Schools Reward Difficult Complex Behavior More Than Simple Behavior, But Simple Behavior Is More Effective.

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

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

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.

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

The Speed At Which A Business Success Is Recognized, Furthermore, Is Not That Important As Long As The Company's Intrinsic Value Is Increasing At A Satisfactory Rate. In Fact, Delayed Recognition Can Be An Advantage: It May Give Us The Chance To Buy More Of A Good Thing At A Bargain Price.

The Best Investment You Can Make, Is An Investment In Yourself... The More You Learn, The More You'll Earn.

Best Investment

I Could End The Deficit In 5 Minutes. You Just Pass A Law That Says That Anytime There Is A Deficit Of More Than 3% Of Gdp All Sitting Members Of Congress Are Ineligible For Reelection.

I Know That Congress Will Do The Right Thing.

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.

Success In Investing Doesn’t Correlate With I.q. Once You Are Above The Level Of 25; Once You Have Ordinary Intelligence, What You Need Is The Temperament To Control The Urges That Get Other People Into Trouble In Investing.

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

Passion For What You Do

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

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

[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.

Investment Ideas, Like Women Are Often More Exciting Than Punctual.

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.

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.

If The World Couldn't See Your Results, Would You Rather Be Thought Of As The World's Greatest Investor But In Reality Have The World's Worst Record? Or Be Thought Of As The World's Worst Investor When You Were Actually The Best?

I Know What I Want To Do And It Makes Sense To Get Going.

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

Measure Of Success

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.

[the U.s. Treasury] Can Borrow Basically Unlimited Amounts. They Can Stay There For Years And Years. These Assets Will Be Worth More Money Over Time. So When Merrill Lynch Sells A Bunch Of Mortgage-related Assets At 22 Cents On The Dollar Like They Did A Month Or So Ago, The Buyer Goes - Is Going To Make Money, And He's Going To Make A Lot More Money If It Happens To Be An Institution Like The U.s. Government Which Has Very, Very Cheap Borrowing Costs.

You Don't Want 300 Million Americans Putting Their Money Under The Mattress.

If I Got Any Good Ideas Out Of That Or I Think They're Good Ideas, I'll Be Glad To Contribute Them But The System Will Probably Overdo Some Other Things.

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

I Think That Trying To Invest Through 535 People Is A Tough Job, You Know, And So I Would Give More Latitude.

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.

The Dominant Factors Affecting Control Valuations Are Earning Power (past And Prospective) And Asset Values.

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.

Learning How To Live Is Much More Important Than Learning How To Make A Living.

Inspirational Life

It Is Obvious That The Performance Of A Stock Last Year Or Last Month Is No Reason, Per Se, To Either Own It Or To Not Own It Now. It Is Obvious That An Inability To "get Even" In A Security That Has Declined Is Of No Importance. It Is Obvious That The Inner Warm Glow That Results From Having Held A Winner Last Year Is Of No Importance In Making A Decision As To Whether It Belongs In An Optimum Portfolio This Year.

Just Imagine Living On 21,000 A Year. I Mean You Have 20 Percent Of The Population Doing That. So You Don't Have To Worry About Guys Like Me.

When People Talk About Cash Being King, It's Not King If It Just Sits There And Never Does Anything.

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

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.

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

People Always Ask Me Where They Should Go To Work, And I Always Tell Them To Go To Work For Whom They Admire The Most.

We Try To Buy Businesses With Good-to-superb Underlying Economics Run By Honest And Able People And Buy Them At Sensible Prices. That's All I'm Trying To Do.

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

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

Writing A Check Separates A Commitment From A Conversation.

I Make Plenty Of Mistakes And I'll Make Plenty More Mistakes, Too. That's Part Of The Game. You've Just Got To Make Sure That The Right Things Overcome The Wrong Ones.

You Ought To Be Able To Explain Why You’re Taking The Job You’re Taking, Why You’re Making The Investment You’re Making, Or Whatever It May Be. And If It Can’t Stand Applying Pencil To Paper, You’d Better Think It Through Some More. And If You Can’t Write An Intelligent Answer To Those Questions, Don’t Do It.

Suppose That An Investor You Admire And Trust Comes To You With An Investment Idea. This Is A Good One, He Says Enthusiastically. I'm In It, And I Think You Should Be, Too.

Is Management Candid With The Shareholders?

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

The Fed Is The Greatest Hedge Fund In History.

You Can Be Sure That Over The Next 10 Years, You'll See Something That You Did Not Think Was Possible.

Never Be Afraid To Ask For Too Much When Selling Or Offer Too Little When Buying.

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.

Money Will Not Change How Healthy You Are Or How Many People Love You.

We Really Can Say No In 10 Seconds Or So To 90%+ Of All The Things That Come Along Simply Because We Have These Filters.

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.

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

If You Lose Money For The Firm, I Will Be Forgiving. If You Lose Reputation, I Will Be Ruthless.

Generally, We Have Translated Greater Output In The Few Hours Of Work Per Week Over The Last Century. And That's A Good Trend Of The Future. But We Do Have To Have A System That, As Output Of Goods And Services Keeps Increasing Per Capita, That It Takes Care Of The People Who Are Willing To Work And Really Are Not Getting By Very Well With A Family On A 40-hour Week.

While The Poor And Middle Class Fight For Us In Afghanistan, And While Most Americans Struggle To Make Ends Meet, We Mega-rich Continue To Get Our Extraordinary Tax Breaks.

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.

Market Prices For Stocks Fluctuate At Great Amplitudes Around Intrinsic Value But, Over The Long Term, Intrinsic Value Is Virtually Always Reflected At Some Point In Market Price.

Intrinsic Value

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.

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

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

If You Are A Professional And Have Confidence, Then I Would Advocate Lots Of Concentration.

Have Confidence

I Don't Have My Diploma From The University Of Nebraska Hanging On My Office Wall, And I Don't Have My Diploma From Columbia Up There Either-but I Do Have My Dale Carnegie Graduation Certificate Proudly Displayed.

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.

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

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

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.

My Friends And I Have Been Coddled Long Enough By A Billionaire-friendly Congress.

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

... 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.

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.

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

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

Investing Money

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

Learn From Your Mistakes

I Think The Rest Of The Country Should Be Paying Less, The 95 Percent That [barack] Obama Talks About Or Maybe Even A Little Higher Than That.

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

Can You Know You Can Have Institutions That Put Curbs On That In Various Ways, And Actually What The Banks, You Know, They Have Various Capital Ratios And That Sort Of Thing, But The Banks Got Around Them, I Mean, They Set Up Sieves And That Sort Of Thing Just To Get More Leverage. People Love Leverage When It's Working. I Mean, It's So Easy To Borrow Money From A Guy At X And Put It Out At X.

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.

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

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

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

In A Difficult Business, No Sooner Is One Problem Solved Than Another Surfaces - Never Is There Just One Cockroach In The Kitchen.

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

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

Most Investors, Both Institutional And Individual, Will Find That The Best Way To Own Common Stocks (shares') Is Through An Index Fund That Charges Minimal Fees. Those Following This Path Are Sure To Beat The Net Results (after Fees And Expenses) Of The Great Majority Of Investment Professionals.

When You're Associating With The People That You Love, Doing What You Love, It Doesn't Get Any Better Than That.

Doing What You Love

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.

Returns Decrease As Motion Increases.

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.

Never Give Up Searching For The Job That You’re Passionate About. Try To Find The Job You’d Have If You Were Independently Rich. Forget About The Pay. When You’re Associating With The People That You Love, Doing What You Love, It Doesn’t Get Any Better Than That.

Doing What You Love

If You Were At Lehman, The Same Thing Happened. If You Were At Aig, The Shareholders Are Getting Creamed On These Things. And Those Shareholders Are Not Just A Bunch Of Big Shots In Wall Street. Those Are Pension Funds, And Those Are Investors All Over The Country. I Wouldn't Worry Too Much About That. Justice Won't Be Perfect On It.

If You Don't Make Mistakes You Can't Make Decisions.

A Diamond Cannot Be Polished Without Friction, Nor A Person Perfected Without Trials. Someone Is Enjoying Shade Today Because Someone Planted A Tree A Long Time Ago.

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

We Also Believe Candour Benefits Us As Managers. The Ceo Who Misleads Often In Public Eventually Misleads Himself In Private.

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.

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.

Goldman Sachs Saying They Might Be Interested In Such An Investment. I'm Familiar With The Company. I've Known The Management, The Current Management, Jack Welch Before Jeff Immelt. I've Known Him For Decades.

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.

On His Giving Pledge Philanthropy: The Way I Got The Message Out Was To Get A Copy Of Forbes, Look Down That 400 List And Start Making Phone Calls! Bill And Melinda [gates] Did The Same Thing. So Keep Publishing The List So I Can Milk It.

Does The Business Have A Consistent Operating History?

Part Of Making Good Decisions In Business Is Recognizing The Poor Decisions You've Made And Why They Were Poor. I've Made Lots Of Mistakes. I'm Going To Make More. It's The Name Of The Game. You Don't Want To Expect Perfection In Yourself. You Want To Strive To Do Your Best. It's Too Demanding To Expect Perfection In Yourself.

I Try To Buy Stock In Businesses That Are So Wonderful That An Idiot Can Run Them. Because Sooner Or Later, One Will.

Investing Money

This Economy Doesn't Work Well Without The Lubrication Of Credit And Trust.

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.

Equities Will Do Well Over Time - You Just Have To Avoid Getting Excited When Other People Are Getting Excited.

After 25 Years Of Buying And Supervising A Great Variety Of Businesses, Charlie [munger] And I Have Not Learned How To Solve Difficult Business Problems. What We Have Learned Is To Avoid Them. To The Extent We Have Been Successful, It Is Because We Have Concentrated On Identifying One-foot Hurdles That We Could Step Over Rather Than Because We Acquired Any Ability To Clear Seven-footers.

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.

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.

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.

I Mean [franklin Delano] Roosevelt Didn't - You Know, When He Came In, He Didn't Print Any Money.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

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.

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

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

Yeah, We Don't Consider Many Stupid Things. I Mean, We Get Rid Of 'em Fast...just Getting Rid Of The Nonsense -- Just Figuring Out That If People Call You And Say, 'i've Got This Great, Wonderful Idea', You Don't Spend 10 Minutes Once You Know In The First Sentence That It Isn't A Great, Wonderful Idea...don't Be Polite And Go Through The Whole Process.

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

I Can Do Anything I Want, Basically, As Long As It Doesn't Involve Athletic Ability, Or Something Like That.

The Dumbest Reason In The World To Buy A Stock Is Because It's Going Up.

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

Our Favorite Holding Period Is Forever.

Funny Inspirational

I Prefer Liquor Store Robbers With Hungry Kids To Companies That Locate Offshore To Avoid U.s. Taxes.

A Low-cost Index Fund Is The Most Sensible Equity Investment For The Great Majority Of Investors. My Mentor, Ben Graham, Took This Position Many Years Ago, And Everything I Have Seen Since Convinces Me Of Its Truth.

In My View, [the Trade Deficit] Will Create Political Turmoil At Some Point...pretty Soon, I Think There Will Be A Big Adjustment.

When Asked How He Became So Successful In Investing, Buffett Answered: 'we Read Hundreds And Hundreds Of Annual Reports Every Year.

A Fool And His Money Are Soon Invited Everywhere.

I Have Got This Letter Which Actually Goes Out The Day After I Die. It Has Already Been Written. And It Says That: "yesterday I Died". And Then It Says: "that's Bad News For Me, But It's Not Bad News For You, The Shareholders Of Berkshire". And Then I Go On And Explain What Is Going To Happen. I Know That Is One Time When They Will Be Really Interested In Hearing From Me.

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?

I Have A Wonderful Family. I Have A Job That I Love And Wonderful People Who Help Me With It. It Can't Get Any Better Than That.

Wild Swings In Share Prices Have More To Do With The "lemming- Like" Behaviour Of Institutional Investors Than With The Aggregate Returns Of The Company They Own.

I Sent One E-mail In My Life. I Sent It To Jeff Raikes At Microsoft, And It Ended Up In Court In Minneapolis, So I Am One For One.

Chains Of Habit Are Too Light To Be Felt Until They Are Too Heavy To Be Broken.

Only When The Tide Goes Out Do You Discover Who's Been Swimming Naked.

There Is One Thing Of Which I Can Assure You. If Good Performance Of The Fund Is Even A Minor Objective, Any Portfolio Encompassing One Hundred Stocks (whether The Manager Is Handling One Thousand Dollars Or One Billion Dollars) Is Not Being Operated Logically. The Addition Of The One Hundredth Stock Simply Can't Reduce The Potential Variance In Portfolio Performance Sufficiently To Compensate For The Negative Effect Its Inclusion Has On The Overall Portfolio Expectation.

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

In Some Corner Of The World They Are Probably Still Holding Regular Meetings Of The Flat Earth Society. We Derive No Comfort Because Important People, Vocal People, Or Great Numbers Of People Agree With Us. Nor Do We Derive Comfort If They Don't.

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

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.

If I Subscribed To The Efficient Market Theory I Would Still Be Delivering Papers

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

Be Fearful When The Markets Get Greedy, Be Greedy When The Markets Get Fearful.

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.

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.

A Single Year's Performance Is Of Minor Importance And, Good Or Bad, Should Never Be Taken Seriously.

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

A Hyperactive Stock Market Is The Pickpocket Of Enterprise.

Asset Values And Earning Power Are The Dominant Factors Affecting The Valuation Of A Controlling Interest In A Business. Market Price, Which Governs Valuation Of Minority Interest Positions, Is Of Little Or No Importance In Valuing A Controlling Interest.

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

I Mean, You Can Explain The Fact That These Are Depressed Prices, You Know. We Think These Assets Are Going To Be Worth A Lot More. And I Think That Case Can Be Made In Certain Situations. But I Think To Just Say, You Know, We're Going To Say A Dollar Of Cash Is Worth $2 All Of A Sudden, It Isn't Worth $2. It's Worth A Dollar Today.

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

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

Investing Money

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.

Risk Comes From Not Knowing What You Are Doing So Wide Diversification Is Only Required When Investors Are Ignorant. You Only Have To Do A Very Few Things In Your Life So Long As You Don't Do Too Many Things Wrong.

Mr. Market Is Your Servant, Not Your Guide.

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?

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

Investing Money

I Made My First Investment At Age Eleven. I Was Wasting My Life Up Until Then.

Our System Works. Over Time, People Will Live Better And Better. We Have A System That Unleashes Human Potential, And Now China Has A System That Unleashes Human Potential. We Will Have Interruptions. We Overshoot And Undershoot Sometimes, But Your Kids And Grandkids Will Live Better Than You. Over Time, We Move Ahead At A Pretty Damn Rapid Rate.

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.

... It's Important To Have The Right Monetary Policy. It's Important For, To Have The Right Fiscal Policy. But It's Nowhere Near As Important As Just The Normal Regenerative Capacity Of American Capitalism.

That's The Reality Of What They're Going To Sell Them To The Treasury For.

We Are In Effect Making A - To Some Extent, Making A Choice Between Future Inflation And Getting Our - Getting Off The Floor. And We're Likely - We're Likely To Have More Inflation In The Future As A Consequence Of The Things We Do To Fight The Present Situation.

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.

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

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.

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.

Managers And Investors Alike Must Understand That Accounting Numbers Are The Beginning, Not The End, Of Business Valuation.

The Noah Rule: Predicting Rain Doesn't Count; Building Arks Does.

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).

Of Our 49 Billion, We Haven't Moved Any To Bitcoin

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.

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.

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

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.

If You Buy Things You Do Not Need, Soon You Will Have To Sell Things You Need.

The Strategy We've Adopted Precludes Our Following Standard Diversification Dogma. Many Pundits Would Therefore Say The Strategy Must Be Riskier Than That Employed By More Conventional Investors. We Disagree. We Believe That A Policy Of Portfolio Concentration May Well Decrease Risk If It Raises, As It Should, Both The Intensity With Which An Investor Thinks About A Business And The Comfort-level He Must Feel With Its Economic Characteristics Before Buying Into It.

Be Brave When Others Are Afraid, And Afraid When Others Are Brave.

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

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.

First Come The Innovators, Then Come The Imitators, Then Come The Idiots.

That's Been Lost. It's A Huge Problem. What You Have Is You Have The Major Institutions Of The World All Wanting To Deleverage. They Want To Take Down Their Assets And Liabilities. What Seemed So Easy To Borrow Against A Year Ago Now Looks Like Rat Poison To Them. So They're Trying To Deleverage. There Is Only One Institution In The World That Can Leverage Up In A Way That's All A Countervailing Force To That, And That's The United States Treasury.

If You've Got The Power To Raise Prices Without Losing Business To A Competitor, You've Got A Very Good Business. And If You Have To Have A Prayer Session Before Raising The Price By A Tenth Of A Cent, Then You've Got A Terrible Business. I've Been In Both, And I Know The Difference.

You Should Invest Like A Catholic Marries: For Life.

We Don't Get Paid For Activity, Just For Being Right. As To How Long We'll Wait, We'll Wait Indefinitely.

Asking For Financial Advice From A Financial Planner Is Like Asking A Barber If You Need A Hair Cut.

We Always See Shifts In Employment. If You Think About It, If You Go Back To 1800, It Took 80 Percent Of The Labor Force To Produce Enough Food For The Country. Now It Takes Less Than 3 Percent. Well, The Truth Is That Market Systems Move People Around.

Derivatives Are Financial Weapons Of Mass Destruction.

Mass Destruction

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

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.

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.

I Think The Oversight Is Great, And I Think That Oversight Ought To Be Devoted Almost Entirely To The Question Is This Being Done At Market You Know. In Other Words, You Want To Make Sure That The Government Isn't Investing Foolishly. But You Don't Want To Care About Which Congressional Districts It Goes To Or Whether Banks Get Favored Over.

You Know, With Your Money And My Brains, I Mean, There's No Telling How Far We'd Go.

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.

Investors Have To Remember: Corporate Profits Are Going Up, But Stocks Are Going Up Faster. How Can That Continue Indefinitely? Investors Can Only Earn What Companies Themselves Can Earn; The Government Or The Markets Themselves Don't Kick Anything In. How Can You Get Anything More Out Of A Farm Than What It Grows?

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.

I Insist On A Lot Of Time Being Spent, Almost Every Day, To Just Sit And Think. That Is Very Uncommon In American Business. I Read And Think. So I Do More Reading And Thinking, And Make Less Impulse Decisions Than Most People In Business. I Do It Because I Like This Kind Of Life.

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.

Great Investment Opportunities Come Around When Excellent Companies Are Surrounded By Unusual Circumstances That Cause The Stock To Be Misappraised.

Take The Job You Would Take If You Were Independently Wealthy. You're Going To Do Well At It.

Trending Author

Julianna Margulies

Category