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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.

-Warren Buffett

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If You've Got The

Warren Buffett

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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.

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

I Think That Actually People In My Situation Should Be Paying More Tax.

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.

Investors Should Remember That Excitement And Expenses Are Their Enemies.

Investing Money

Investment Success

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.

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.

Most Business Mistakes Are Irreversible Setbacks, But You Get Another Chance. There Are Two Things In Life That You Don't Get Another Chance At - Marrying The Wrong Person And What You Do With Your Children.

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

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.

An Investor Should Act As Though He Had A Lifetime Decision Card With Just Twenty Punches On It.

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

If You Gave Me $100 Billion And Said Take Away The Soft Drink Leadership Of Coca-cola In The World, I'd Give It Back To You And Say It Can't Be Done.

Long Ago, Ben Graham Taught Me That "price Is What You Pay; Value Is What You Get." Whether We're Talking About Socks Or Stocks, I Like Buying Quality Merchandise When It Is Marked Down.

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.

Ignore The Stock Market, Ignore The Economy, And Buy A Business You Understand.

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

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

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

It's Much Easier To Stay Out Of Trouble Now Than To Get Out Of Trouble Later.

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.

I Can't Promise Results, But I Can Promise A Common Destiny.

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

Investment Philosophy Is The Clear Understanding That By Owning Shares Of Stocks He Owns Businesses, Not Pieces Of Paper.

Never Test The Depth Of River With Both The Feet.

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

We Believe That According The Name 'investors' To Institutions That Trade Actively Is Like Calling Someone Who Repeatedly Engages In One-night Stands A 'romantic.'

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

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

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.

Fund Consultants Like To Require Style Boxes Such As "long-short," "macro," "international Equities." At Berkshire Our Only Style Box Is "smart."

Every Company That Has An Economist Working For Him Has One Employee Too Many.

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 Investing, Pessimism Is Your Friend, Euphoria The Enemy.

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

Continually Challenge And Be Willing To Amend Your Best Loved Ideas.

The Market System Rewards Me Outlandishly For What I Do, But That Doesn't Mean I'm Any More Deserving Of A Good Life Than A Teacher Or A Doctor Or Someone Who Fights In Afghanistan.

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

We've Got A Wonderful Economic Formula In This Country.

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.

There Is Seldom Just One Cockroach In The Kitchen. You Know, You Turn On The Light And, All Of Sudden, They All Start Scurrying Around.

We Do Not Have, Nor Have Had, And Never Will Have An Opinion About Where The Stock Market, Interest Rates, Or Business Activity Will Be A Year From Now.

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

Although We Deal With Probabilities And Expectations, The Actual Results Can Deviate Substantially From Such Expectations, Particularly On A Short-term Basis.

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

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

I've Seen More People Fail Because Of Liquor And Leverage -- Leverage Being Borrowed Money. 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.

Investing Money

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.

The Greatest Enemies Of The Equity Investor Are Expenses And Emotions.

Basically, The Single-most Important Decision In Evaluating A Business Is Pricing Power.

Important Decisions

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.

An Investor Should Ordinarily Hold A Small Piece Of An Outstanding Business With The Same Tenacity That An Owner Would Exhibit If He Owned All Of That Business.

Read 500 Pages Every Day. That's How Knowledge Works. It Builds Up Like Compound Interest.

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 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.

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.

In Earlier Years, A Lesser Effort Produced Literally Dozens Of Comparable Opportunities. It Is Difficult To Be Objective About The Causes For Such Diminution Of One's Own Productivity. Three Factors That Seem Apparent Are: (1) A Somewhat Changed Market Environment; (2) Our Increased Size; And (3) Substantially More Competition.

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

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.

If You Want Your Business To Survive For 100 Years, You've Got To Make It Through Every Single Day For 100 Years. It's Not Enough To Do It 99.9% Of The Time.

...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.

My Favorite Time Frame For Holding A Stock Is Forever.

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

I Did Not Think I Would See The Day When, You Know, An Aig Would Not Be Able To Have Its Checks Clear.

[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'll Take The Deal, Whatever You Want To Do.

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

Passion For What You Do

If You Gave Me The Choice Of Being Ceo Of General Electric Or Ibm Or General Motors, You Name It, Or Delivering Papers, I Would Deliver Papers. I Would. I Enjoyed Doing That. I Can Think About What I Want To Think. I Don't Have To Do Anything I Don't Want To Do.

When It's Raining Gold, Reach For A Bucket, Not A Thimble.

Lethargy, Bordering On Sloth Should Remain The Cornerstone Of An Investment Style.

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.

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

I'm Happy When I Can Spend Every Day Doing The Things That I Like To Do. That's My Luxury.

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

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.

I'd Rather Have A $10 Million Business Making 15 Per Cent Than A $100 Million Business Making 5 Per Cent.

Never Risk What You Have And Need For What We Don't Have And Don't Need.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

An Irresistable Footnote: In 1971, Pension Fund Managers Invested A Record 122% Of Net Funds Available In Equities - At Full Prices They Couldn't Buy Enough Of Them. In 1974, After The Bottom Had Fallen Out, They Committed A Then Record Low Of 21% To Stocks.

We Intend To Continue Our Practice Of Working Only With People Whom We Like And Admire. This Policy Not Only Maximizes Our Chances For Good Results, It Also Ensures Us An Extraordinarily Good Time.

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.

No Matter How Great The Talent Or Efforts, Some Things Just Take Time.

Investing Money

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

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

If Some Institution Wants To Sell You A Billion Dollars Worth Of Mortgages, They Might Have To Sell 100 Million In The Market, And Then You'll Buy The Other 900 Million On The Same Terms. Now, The Very Fact That This Has Been Authorized Or Will Be Authorized, I Hope, Will Firm Up The Market To Some Degree. And That's Fine. But You Don't Want To Have Artificial Prices Being Paid.

We Have A Country Where I Don't Know Whether It's A Million Households A Year Or More, But Good Form.

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."

People Will Always Try To Stop You From Doing The Right Thing If It Is Unconventional.

Like Most Trends, At The Beginning It's Driven By Fundamentals, At Some Point Speculation Takes Over. What The Wise Man Does In The Beginning, The Fool Does In The End.

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

Would Your Reply Possibly Be This? Well, It All Depends On What My Tax Rate Will Be On The Gain You're Saying We're Going To Make. If The Taxes Are Too High, I Would Rather Leave The Money In My Savings Account, Earning A Quarter Of 1 Percent. Only In Grover Norquist's Imagination Does Such A Response Exist.

Emotional Makeup Is More Important Than Technical Skill

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

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?

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

I've Learned Mainly By Reading Myself. So I Don't Think I Have Any Original Ideas. Certainly, I Talk About Reading Graham. I've Read Phil Fisher. So I've Gotten A Lot Of My Ideas From Reading. You Can Learn A Lot From Other People. In Fact, I Think If You Learn Basically From Other People, You Don't Have To Get Too Many New Ideas On Your Own. You Can Just Apply The Best Of What You See.

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.

Success Is Having People Love You That You Want To Have Love You.

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

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.

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.

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.

Inflation Could Be A Very - Is A Likely Consequence Out Of What's Going On Now.

All I Have To Do Is Think And Not Be Influenced By Others.

I Would Say That An Rfc-like Thing Might Make Sense. I Probably Would Do It Myself. But I Don't Think Trying To Combine That With What's Going Through Now, I Think What Is Needed Now Is Liquidity.

Time Is The Friend Of The Wonderful Business. It's The Enemy Of The Lousy Business. If You're In A Lousy Business For A Long Time, You're Going To Get A Lousy Result, Even If You Buy It Cheap. If You're In A Wonderful Business For A Long Time, Even If You Pay A Little Too Much Going In, You're Going To Get A Wonderful Result If You Stay In A Long Time.

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

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

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

If You Don't Find A Way To Make Money While You Sleep, You Will Work Until You Die.

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

Shares Are Not Mere Pieces Of Paper. They Represent Part Ownership Of A Business. So, When Contemplating An Investment, Think Like A Prospective Owner.

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.

The Smarter The Journalists Are, The Better Off Society Is. For To A Degree, People Read The Press To Inform Themselves - And The Better The Teacher, The Better The Student Body.

It Makes A Difference Who The Treasury Secretary Is.

Making A Difference

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

We Try To Exert A Ted Williams Kind Of Discipline. In His Book The Science Of Hitting, Ted Explains That He Carved The Strike Zone Into 77 Cells, Each The Size Of A Baseball. Swinging Only At Balls In His "best" Cell, He Knew, Would Allow Him To Bat .400; Reaching For Balls In His "worst" Spot, The Low Outside Corner Of The Strike Zone, Would Reduce Him To .230. In Other Words, Waiting For The Fat Pitch Would Mean A Trip To The Hall Of Fame; Swinging Indiscriminately Would Mean A Ticket To The Minors.

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

The Best Investment You Can Make Is In Yourself.

Investment Success

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.

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

If You Are Not Willing To Own A Stock For 10 Years, Do Not Even Think About Owning It For 10 Minutes.

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.

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

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.

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

A Company Should Be Viewed As An Unfolding Movie, Not As A Still Photograph

We're Perfectly Willing To Trade Away A Big Payoff For A Certain Payoff.

In A Bull Market, One Must Avoid The Error Of The Preening Duck That Quacks Boastfully After A Torrential Rainstorm, Thinking That Its Paddling Skills Have Caused It To Rise In The World. A Right-thinking Duck Would Instead Compare Its Position After The Downpour To That Of The Other Ducks On The Pond.

Investing Is Laying Out Money Now To Get More Money Back In The Future.

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

Always Associate Yourself With People Who Are Better Than You.

People Should Always Know Better.

Remember That The Stock Market Is Manic-depressive.

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.

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

Writing A Check Separates A Commitment From A Conversation.

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

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

House Prices Just Soared Beyond - Beyond Reason In Many Places And They Got Financed In Silly Ways, And People Lied About Loans, All Kinds Of Accesses Entered Into It. But That Is What - That Is The Single Biggest Cause Of Why We're Here.

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.

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

Risk Comes From Not Knowing What You're Doing.

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.

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.

The Line Separating Investment And Speculation, Which Is Never Bright And Clear, Becomes Blurred Still Further When Most Market Participants Have Recently Enjoyed Triumphs. Nothing Sedates Rationality Like Large Doses Of Effortless Money. After A Heady Experience Of That Kind, Normally Sensible People Drift Into Behavior Akin To That Of Cinderella At The Ball.

Investing Money

In Fact, In My Adult Lifetime, I Don't Think I've Ever Seen People As Fearful Economically As They Are Right Now.

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.

When A Management With A Reputation For Brilliance Tackles A Business With A Reputation For Bad Economics, It Is The Reputation Of The Business That Remains Intact.

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

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

Never Lie Under Any Circumstances.

The Secret To Happiness Is Having Low Expectations.

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

Investment Success

Do Not Put All Your Eggs In One Basket.

Investment Success

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.

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

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.

Focus On Return On Equity, Not Earnings Per Share.

The One Piece Of Advice I Can Give You Is, Do What Turns You On. Do Something That If You Had All The Money In The World, You’d Still Be Doing It. You’ve Got To Have A Reason To Jump Out Of Bed In The Morning.

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

Beware [of] The Investment Activity That Produces Applause; The Great Moves Are Usually Greeted By Yawns.

Well, One Time Some Attractive Woman Sat Next To Charlie And Asked Him What He Owed His Success To, And, Unfortunately, She Insisted On A One Word Answer. He Had A Speech Prepared That Would Have Gone On For Several Hours. But When Forced To Boil It Down To One Word, He Said That Was "rational". You Know, He Comes Equipped For Rationality, And He Applies It In Business. He Doesn't Always Apply It Elsewhere, But He Applies It In Business And That Has Made Him A Huge Business Success.

Business Success

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

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).

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

I Never Invest In Anything That I Don't Understand.

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.

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

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.

I Spend Twelve Hours A Week - A Little Over 10% Of My Waking Hours - Playing The Game. Now I Am Trying To Figure Out How To Get By On Less Sleep In Order To Fit In A Few More Hands.

Don't Invest In Pieces Of Papers (stocks), Invest In Great Businesses Underlying Them

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. The Calculation Of Intrinsic Value, Though, Is Not So Simple. As Our Definition Suggests, Intrinsic Value Is An Estimate Rather Than A Precise Figure, And It Is Additionally An Estimate That Must Be Changed If Interest Rates Move Or Forecasts Of Future Cash Flows Are Revised.

Read Ben Graham And Phil Fisher Read Annual Reports, But Don't Do Equations With Greek Letters In Them.

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.

I Am Out Of Step With Present Conditions. When The Game Is No Longer Played Your Way, It Is Only Human To Say The New Approach Is All Wrong, Bound To Lead To Trouble, And So On. On One Point, However, I Am Clear. I Will Not Abandon A Previous Approach Whose Logic I Understand ( Although I Find It Difficult To Apply ) Even Though It May Mean Foregoing Large, And Apparently Easy, Profits To Embrace An Approach Which I Don't Fully Understand, Have Not Practiced Successfully, And Which Possibly Could Lead To Substantial Permanent Loss Of Capital.

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

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

Investment Success

Diversification Is A Protection Against Ignorance. It Makes Very Little Sense For Those Who Know What They're Doing.

When Berkshire Buys Common Stock, We Approach The Transaction As If We Were Buying Into A Private Business.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

My Net Worth Is The Market Value Of Holdings Less The Tax Payable Upon Sale. The Liability Is Just As Real As The Asset Unless The Value Of The Asset Declines (ouch), The Asset Is Given Away (no Comment), Or I Die With It. The Latter Course Of Action Would Appear To At Least Border On A Pyrrhic Victory.

You Don't Ever Ask A Barber Whether You Need A Haircut.

Investors Should Be Skeptical Of History-based Models. Constructed By A Nerdy-sounding Priesthood Using Esoteric Terms Such As Beta, Gamma, Sigma And The Like, These Models Tend To Look Impressive. Too Often, Though, Investors Forget To Examine The Assumptions Behind The Models. Beware Of Geeks Bearing Formulas.

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.

The Advice "you Never Go Broke Taking A Profit" Is Foolish.

Wall Street Makes Its Money On Activity. You Make Your Money On Inactivity.

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.

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

I Never Attempt To Make Money On The Stock Market. I Buy On The Assumption That They Could Close The Market The Next Day And Not Reopen It For Five Years.

Greatest Wealth

If You Invested In A Very Low Cost Index Fund - Where You Don't Put The Money In At One Time, But Average In Over 10 Years -you'll Do Better Than 90% Of People Who Start Investing At The Same Time.

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