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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).

-Warren Buffett

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More Investment Sins Are

Warren Buffett

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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).

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The Best Investment You Can Make Is In Yourself.

Investment Success

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.

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

You Can't Stand To See Your Neighbor Getting Rich. You Know You're Smarter Than He Is And He's Doing These Things And He's Getting Rich.

Aig Would Be Doing Fine Today. It Was One Of The Ten Largest Companies In The United States In Terms Of Market Value, Over 200 Billion, The Most Respected Insurer And Everything In The World.

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

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 You’re In The Luckiest One Per Cent Of Humanity, You Owe It To The Rest Of Humanity To Think About The Other 99 Per Cent.

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.

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

It's Very Important That The Determination Of The Us Congress To Do What Is Is Needed Be Made Evident This Week And By The Actions Of Most Of The Members. I Mean, You're Not Going To Get Total Assent.

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.

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

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

Occasionally, A Man Must Rise Above Principles.

You Should Invest In A Business That Even A Fool Can Run, Because Someday A Fool Will.

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.

You Pay A Very High Price In The Stock Market For A Cheery Consensus.

The Most Important Investment You Can Make Is In Yourself... Nobody Can Tax It Or Take It Away From You.

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

If You Aren't Willing To Own A Stock For Ten Years, Don't Even Think About Owning It For Ten Minutes. Put Together A Portfolio Of Companies Whose Aggregate Earnings March Upward Over The Years, And So Also Will The Portfolio's Market Value.

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

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

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

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

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

A Home Is One Of The Most Important Assets That Most People Will Ever Buy. Homes Are Also Where Memories Are Made And You Want To Work With Someone You Can Trust.

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.

In One Way, I'm Sympathetic To The Institutional Reluctance To Face The Music. I'd Give A Lot To Mark My Weight To 'model' Rather Than To 'market.'

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

It Is Impossible To Unsign A Contract, So Do All Your Thinking Before You Sign.

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

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.

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

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

The Ability To Say No Is A Tremendous Advantage For An Investor.

Emotional Makeup Is More Important Than Technical Skill

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

Risk Is A Part Of God's Game, Alike For Men And Nations.

I Lose Confidence In Other People, All Kinds Of Institutions.

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

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).

Investment Must Be Rational; If You Can't Understand It, Don't Do It.

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.

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.

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.

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 Labelled Speculation

I Am Quite Serious When I Say That I Do Not Believe There Are, On The Whole Earth Besides, So Many Intensified Bores As In These United States. No Man Can Form An Adequate Idea Of The Real Meaning Of The Word, Without Coming Here.

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

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.

The Truth Is That I've Got All My Net Worth Safely In Berkshire And I Will Never Sell A Share So There Is No One More Concerned About What Happens After My Death Than I Am.

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

I Know That Congress Will Do The Right Thing.

If You Expect To Be A Net Saver During The Next 5 Years, Should You Hope For A Higher Or Lower Stock Market During That Period? Many Investors Get This One Wrong. Even Though They Are Going To Be Net Buyers Of Stocks For Many Years To Come, They Are Elated When Stock Prices Rise And Depressed When They Fall. This Reaction Makes No Sense. Only Those Who Will Be Sellers Of Equities In The Near Future Should Be Happy At Seeing Stocks Rise. Prospective Purchasers Should Much Prefer Sinking Prices.

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.

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

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.

We Don't Get Paid For Being Busy, We Get Paid For Being Right.

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.

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.

If You Want A Government That's Going To Do The Things We Ask Our Government To Do, You've Got To Get It From Somebody.

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

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.

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

Do Not Put All Your Eggs In One Basket.

Investment Success

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

If This Is A War, My Side Has The Nuclear Bomb. We Have K Street. We Have Wall Street. Debbie Doesn't Have Anybody. I Want A Government That Is Responsive To The People Who Got The Short Straw In Life.

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.

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

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.

[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.

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

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

Important Decisions

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

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

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.

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

I Knew A Lot About What I Did When I Was 20. I Had Read A Lot, And I Aspired To Learn Everything I Could About The Subject.

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

Banking Is Very Good Business If You Don't Do Anything Dumb.

Just Look At That Forbes 400. Takes A Billion Three To Get On The Forbes 400 This Year. And The Aggregate Wealth Is Just Staggering. And Those People Are Paying Less Percentage Of Their Total Income To The Federal Government Than Their Receptionists Are. [...] I'll Bet A Million Dollars Against Any Member Of The Forbes 400 Who Challenges - Me That The Average For The Forbes 400 Will Be Less Than The Average Of Their Receptionists.

I Do Not Like Debt And Do Not Like To Invest In Companies That Have Too Much Debt, Particularly Long-term Debt. With Long-term Debt, Increases In Interest Rates Can Drastically Affect Company Profits And Make Future Cash Flows Less Predictable.

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.

Beware Of Geeks Bearing Formulas.

Investors Should Remember That Excitement And Expenses Are Their Enemies. And If They Insist On Trying To Time Their Participation In Equities, They Should Try To Be Fearful When Others Are Greedy And Greedy Only When Others Are Fearful.

Investing Money

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

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

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

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're Neither Right Nor Wrong Because Other People Agree With You. You're Right Because Your Facts Are Right And Your Reasoning Is Right - That's The Only Thing That Makes You Right. And If Your Facts And Reasoning Are Right, You Don't Have To Worry About Anybody Else.

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

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

Everyday Things

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

Enormous Quantities

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

Too Often, Executive Compensation In The U.s. Is Ridiculously Out Of Line With Performance. That Won't Change, Moreover, Because The Deck Is Stacked Against Investors When It Comes To The Ceo's Pay.

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

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

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

Guarantees That

It's Easy To Identify Many Investment Managers With Great Recent Records. But Past Results, Though Important, Do Not Suffice When Prospective Performance Is Being Judged. How The Record Has Been Achieved Is Crucial.

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

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.

You're Dealing With A Lot Of Silly People In The Marketplace; It's Like A Great Big Casino And Everyone Else Is Boozing. If You Can Stick With Pepsi, You Should Be Ok.

Investing Money

If You're An Investor, You're Looking On What The Asset Is Going To Do, If You're A Speculator, You're Commonly Focusing On What The Price Of The Object Is Going To Do, And That's Not Our Game.

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

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.

People Should Always Know Better.

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.

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

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

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

You Have Hedge Funds And People Like That Buying These Assets To Yield 15 Or 20 Percent, I Mean, That's The Buyer For These People That Are Trying To Unload Them.

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

Investing Money

Remember That The Stock Market Is Manic-depressive.

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.

Benign Neglect, Bordering On Sloth, Remains The Hallmark Of Our Investment Process.

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

Investing Money

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.

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

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

I Mean, You Know, You're Not Going To Change The Human Animal. And The Human Animal Really Doesn't Get A Lot Smarter.

There Is No Question We Have An Access Stock.

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

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.

Observing That The Market Was Frequently Efficient, Emt Adherents Went On To Conclude Incorrectly That It Was Always Efficient. The Difference Between These Propositions Is Night And Day.

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 Don't Measure My Life By The Money I've Made. Other People Might, But Certainly Don't.

The Thing To Do Is To Keep Your Mind When The World Around You Is Losing Theirs.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Long Ago, Sir Isaac Newton Gave Us Three Laws Of Motion, Which Were The Work Of Genius. But Sir Isaac's Talents Didn't Extend To Investing: He Lost A Bundle In The South Sea Bubble, Explaining Later, 'i Can Calculate The Movement Of The Stars, But Not The Madness Of Men.' If He Had Not Been Traumatized By This Loss, Sir Isaac Might Well Have Gone On To Discover The Fourth Law Of Motion: For Investors As A Whole, Returns Decrease As Motion Increases.

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

Taking The High Road

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

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.

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.

Americans Are In A Cycle Of Fear Which Leads To People Not Wanting To Spend And Not Wanting To Make Investments, And That Leads To More Fear. We'll Break Out Of It. It Takes Time.

I Don't Want To Hold Out False Hopes That The - By Some Magic Moment, That Things Will Turn Around In A Couple Months Because They Wouldn't, Charlie. I Mean, And It's A Big Mistake To Try And Mislead People.

The Greater The Potential For Reward In The Value Portfolio, The Less Risk There Is.

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

Money Is Not Everything. Make Sure You Earn A Lot Before Speaking Such Nonsense.

Growth And Value Investing Are Joined At The Hip.

I Think Any Time You Couple The Term "wall Street" With "bailout" Or Something Like That, You Know - I Don't Like What's Going On In Wall Street.

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

The Key To Success Is Emotional Stability.

My Job Is Essentially Just Corralling More And More And More Facts And Information, And Occasionally Seeing Whether That Leads To Some Action.

I Learned To Go Into Business Only With People Whom I Like, Trust, And Admire.

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.

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

The Range Of Derivatives Contracts Is Limited Only By The Imagination Of Man (or Sometimes, So It Seems, Madmen). Say You Want To Write A Contract Speculating On The Number Of Twins To Be Born In Nebraska In 2020. No Problem-at A Price, You Will Easily Find An Obliging Counterparty.

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

Investing Your Time

I 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.

It Irritates The Hell Out Of Me But You Can't Buy Love.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Investing Requires Qualities Of Temperament Way More Than It Requires Qualities Of Intellect.

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.

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

If I Taught A Class, On My Final Exam I Would Take An Internet Company And Ask, 'how Much Is This Company Worth?' Anyone Who Would Answer, I Would Flunk.

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

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.

Investing Is Not As Tough As Being A Top-notch Bridge Player. All It Takes Is The Ability To See Things As They Really Are.

I'm Not Worried They're All About The Investments We Make. I Mean, Listen, This Country - We've Got $46,000 Or $47,000 Of Gdp Per Capita. Now, We've Done Pretty Darn Well. We'll Do Better In The Future.

As Far As You Are Concerned, The Stock Market Does Not Exist. Ignore It.

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

If You Don't Know The Jewelry, Know The Jeweller

[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.

When Bills Come Due, Only Cash Is Legal Tender. Don't Leave Home Without It.

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

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

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

Investing Money

Rule No.1: Never Lose Money. Rule No.2: Never Forget Rule No.1.

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

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

The True Investor Welcomes Volatility ... A Wildly Fluctuating Market Means That Irrationally Low Prices Will Periodically Be Attached To Solid Businesses.

Do Not Take Yearly Results Too Seriously. Instead, Focus On Four Or Five-year Averages.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

When A Management With Reputation For Brilliance Gets Hooked Up With A Business With A Reputation For Bad Economics, It's The Reputation Of The Business That Remains Intact.

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

Derivatives Are Financial Weapons Of Mass Destruction.

Mass Destruction

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

Never Count On Making A Good Sale. Have The Purchase Price Be So Attractive That Even A Mediocre Sale Gives Good Results.

I Won't Close Down A Business Of Subnormal Profitability Merely To Add A Fraction Of A Point To Our Corporate Returns. I Also Feel It Inappropriate For Even An Exceptionally Profitable Company To Fund An Operation Once It Appears To Have Unending Losses In Prospect. Adam Smith Would Disagree With My First Proposition And Karl Marx Would Disagree With My Second; The Middle Ground Is The Only Position That Leaves Me Comfortable.

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Stephen R. Donaldson

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