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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.

-Warren Buffett

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It's Just That I

Warren Buffett

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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.

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

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 Am A Better Investor Because I Am A Businessman, And A Better Businessman Because I Am No Investor.

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

We're Still In A Recession. We're Not Gonna Be Out Of It For A While, But We Will Get Out.

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

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.

I'm Always Interested In Understanding The Math Of Things And Understanding As Much As I Can About All Aspects Of Business. And What I Learn Today May Be Useful To Me Two Years From Now. That's Really The Wonderful Thing About Investments Is Your Knowledge Is Cumulative.

If You Have More Than 120 Or 130 I.q. Points, You Can Afford To Give The Rest Away. You Don't Need Extraordinary Intelligence To Succeed As An Investor.

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

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

I Wouldn't Want To Manufacture Cigarettes. But If I Owned - We Do Own Costco. Do They Sell Them? Yes. So I Don't Have A Problem Owning Stock In That. But I Just Wouldn't Want To - I Wouldn't Want To Do It Myself. I Basically Think, If Anything Is Sufficiently Antisocial, Society Should Do Something About It. But That's A Separate Question. But - And I Don't Think There's Any Company That I Have Seen That's 100 Percent Pure.

It Is Easier To Rationalize Than It Is To Be Rational.

We Like To Buy Businesses, But We Don't Like To Sell Them.

What We Really Want To Do Is Buy Businesses That We Would Be Happy To Own Forever.

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

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've Already Written A Section In The Annual Report For Next Year Explaining Why I Think In One Case That The Figures On Our Balance Sheet As Calculated Are Wrong. But It's The Standard Way Of Doing It. It's Holy Writ. The Sec Wants Us To Do It That Way, And We'll Do It That Way, And I'll Explain Why I Think It's Wrong And Shareholders Can Read It And See Whether They Agree With My Logic Or Don't.

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.

I Have Worked With Investors For 60 Years And I Have Yet To See Anyone - Not Even When Capital Gains Rates Were 39.9 Percent In 1976-77 - Shy Away From A Sensible Investment Because Of The Tax Rate On The Potential Gain.

In Business, I Look For Economic Castles Protected By Unbreachable 'moats'.

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

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

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

A Public-opinion Poll Is No Substitute For Thought.

... 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.

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

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

There Seems To Be Some Perverse Human Characteristic That Likes To Make Easy Things Difficult.

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

The Only Time To Buy These Is On A Day With No 'y' In It.

I Want To Be Able To Explain My Mistakes. This Means I Do Only The Things I Completely Understand.

Focus On Return On Equity, Not Earnings Per Share.

Truly Conservative Actions Arise From Intelligent Hypotheses, Correct Facts And Sound Reasoning.

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

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

As One Of My Older Friends Says, "nostalgia Just Isn't What It Used To Be." Let's Take A Stab At It, Anyway.

I Know That Congress Will Do The Right Thing.

Calculate "owner Earnings" To Get A True Reflection Of Value.

If Knowing History Made You Rich, Librarians Would Be Billionaires.

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.

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?

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

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?

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.

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

If You've Got A Good Enough Business, If You Have A Monopoly Newspaper, If You Have A Network Television Station - I'm Talking Of The Past - You Know, Your Idiot Nephew Could Run It. And If You've Got A Really Good Business, It Doesn't Make Any Difference.

The Financial Calculus That Charlie And I Employ Would Never Permit Our Trading A Good Night's Sleep For A Shot At A Few Extra Percentage Points Of Return. I've Never Believed In Risking What My Friends And Family Have And Need In Order To Pursue What They Don't Have And Don't Need.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

Investment Success

I've Made Money Over The Years By Buying Into Good Companies, Run By Good People, At Attractive Prices. And I Don't Try And Make It Out Of Buying Into The Market At One Point And Selling At Another Point.

Do Not Put All Your Eggs In One Basket.

Investment Success

I Find That The Standard Of Living Does Not Go Up In Proportion With The Cost Of Living. The Trick In Life Is To Do Things That Are Fun All The Time.

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

Nothing Sedates Rationality Like Large Doses Of Effortless Money.

Investing Money

A Contrarian Approach Is Just As Foolish As A Follow-the-crowd Strategy. What's Required Is Thinking Rather Than Polling.

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

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

The Rich Invest In Time, The Poor Invest In Money.

Words Of Wisdom

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.

I Have No Use Whatsoever For Projections Or Forecasts. They Create An Illusion Of Apparent Precision. The More Meticulous They Are, The More Concerned You Should Be. We Never Look At Projections, But We Care Very Much About, And Look Very Deeply At, Track Records. If A Company Has A Lousy Track Record, But A Very Bright Future, We Will Miss The Opportunity.

I Am A Huge Bull On This Country. We Will Not Have A Double-dip Recession At All. I See Our Businesses Coming Back Almost Across The Board.

Double Standard

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.

You Get What I Call The Natural Progression, The Three Is. The Innovators, The Imitators, And The Idiots.

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

Intrinsic Value

Honesty Is A Very Expensive Gift, Don't Expect It From Cheap People.

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

That Goes Back To 1932, Although It Was Really Implemented In '33 Under Jesse Jones, And It Invested In Mostly Banks Initially And Preferred Stock And That Sort Of Thing. So There Are Two Things Needed In The System, The One That's Needed Overwhelmingly Is Liquidity. I Mean, When People Are Trying To [unintelligible], There Has To Be Somebody There To Buy.

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

A Pin Lies In Wait For Every Bubble And When The Two Eventually Meet, A New Wave Of Investors Learns Some Very Old Lessons.

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.

The Only Way To Be Loved Is To Be Loveable, Which Really Irritates Me.

It's Never Paid To Bet Against America. We Come Through Things, But Its Not Always A Smooth Ride.

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

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.

I Just Think That - When A Country Needs More Income And We Do, We're Only Taking In 15 Percent Of Gdp, I Mean, That - That - When A Country Needs More Income, They Should Get It From The People That Have It.

Never Get Too Hung Up On Mistakes.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

Derivatives Are Like Sex. It's Not Who We're Sleeping With, It's Who They're Sleeping With That's The Problem.

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

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.

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.

Only When You Combine Sound Intellect With Emotional Discipline Do You Get Rational Behavior.

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.

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

Investment Success

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

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

My Rather Puritanical View Is That Any Investment Manager, Whether Operating As Broker, Investment Counselor Of A Trust Department, Investment Company, Etc., Should Be Willing To State Unequivocally What He Is Going To Attempt To Accomplish And How He Proposes To Measure The Extent To Which He Gets The Job Done.

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

Remember That The Stock Market Is Manic-depressive.

Accounting Is The Language Of Business.

Take The High Road; It's Far Less Crowded.

Taking The High Road

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

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

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

For Some Reason, People Take Their Cues From Price Action Rather Than From Values. What Doesn't Work Is When You Start Doing Things That You Don't Understand Or Because They Worked Last Week For Somebody Else. The Dumbest Reason In The World To Buy A Stock Is Because It's Going Up.

Games Are Won By Players Who Focus On The Playing Field -- Not By Those Whose Eyes Are Glued To The Scoreboard.

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

We've Used Up A Lot Of Bullets. And We Talk About Stimulus. But The Truth Is, We're Running A Federal Deficit That's 9 Percent Of Gdp. That Is Stimulative As All Get Out. It's More Stimulative Than Any Policy We've Followed Since World War Ii.

Nevertheless, As Circumstances Presently Appear, I Feel Substantially Greater Size Is More Likely To Harm Future Results Than To Help Them. This Might Not Be True For My Own Personal Results, But It Is Likely To Be True For Your Results.

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?

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.

The Typical Large Company Has A Compensation Committee, They Don't Look For Dobermans On That Committee, They Look For Chihuahuas.

I Think Confidence Will Come Back.

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

Investing Money

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

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

That Which Is Not Worth Doing At All Is Not Worth Doing Well.

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

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

I Think That Both Parties Should Declare The Debt Limit As A Political Weapon Of Mass Destruction Which Can't Be Used. I Mean, It Is Silly To Have A Country That Has 237 Years Building Up Its Reputation And Then Have People Threaten To Tear It Down Because They're Not Getting Some Other Matter.

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

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

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

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

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

For Example: (1) As If Governed By Newton's First Law Of Motion, An Institution Will Resist Any Change In Its Current Direction; (2) Just As Work Expands To Fill Available Time, Corporate Projects Or Acquisitions Will Materialize To Soak Up Available Funds; (3) Any Business Craving Of The Leader, However Foolish, Will Be Quickly Supported By Detailed Rate-of-return And Strategic Studies Prepared By His Troops; And (4) The Behavior Of Peer Companies, Whether They Are Expanding, Acquiring, Setting Executive Compensation Or Whatever, Will Be Mindlessly Imitated.

We Always Live In An Uncertain World. What Is Certain Is That The United States Will Go Forward Over Time.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

Diversification Is Protection Against Ignorance. It Makes Little Sense If You Know What You Are Doing.

Diversification May Preserve Wealth, But Concentration Builds Wealth.

Concentration Of Wealth

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

The Truth Is, Everything That Has Happened In My Life... That I Thought Was A Crushing Event At The Time, Has Turned Out For The Better.

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.

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.

Never Invest In A Business You Don't Understand.

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

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

[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 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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

The Value Of Market Esoterica To The Consumer Of Investment Advice Is A Different Story. In My Opinion, Investment Success Will Not Be Produced By Arcane Formulae, Computer Programs Or Signals Flashed By The Price Behavior Of Stocks And Markets. Rather 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.

Investment Success

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.

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

We've Been In A Recession, By Any Common Sense Definition, Because If You Look At The American Public, They've Got 20 Billion - 20 Trillion, I Should Say, Worth Of Residential Homes.

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

Investing Money

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

We Enjoy The Process Far More Than The Proceeds.

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

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

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

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.

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.

A Hyperactive Stock Market Is The Pickpocket Of Enterprise.

[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.

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

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.

Cash Never Makes Us Happy, But It's Better To Have The Money Burning A Hole In Berkshire's Pocket Than Resting Comfortably In Someone Else's.

The Best Thing I Did Was Choose The Right Heroes.

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.

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

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

Investing Money

Life Is Like A Snowball. The Important Thing Is Finding Wet Snow And A Really Long Hill.

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

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.

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

But, Surprise - None Of These Blockbuster Events Made The Slightest Dent In Ben Graham's Investment Principles. Nor Did They Render Unsound The Negotiated Purchases Of Fine Businesses At Sensible Prices. Imagine The Cost To Us, Then, If We Had Let A Fear Of Unknowns Cause Us To Defer Or Alter The Deployment Of Capital. Indeed, We Have Usually Made Our Best Purchases When Apprehensions About Some Macro Event Were At A Peak. Fear Is The Foe Of The Faddist, But The Friend Of The Fundamentalist.

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

Investing Money

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

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

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

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

It Is Not Necessary To Do Extraordinary Things To Get Extraordinary Results.

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

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.

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Michael Fassbender

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