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

-Warren Buffett

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To Invest Successfully, You

Warren Buffett

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

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

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.

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.

There's Always A Mismatch. I Mean, You Know, As The Economy Evolves, It Reallocates Resources. Now, The Real Problem, In My View, Is - This Has Been - The Prosperity Has Been Unbelievable For The Extremely Rich People. If You Go To 1982, When Forbes Put On Their First 400 List, Those People Had $93 Billion. They Now They Have $2.4 Trillion, 25 For One. That Is - This Has Been A Prosperity That's Been Disproportionately Rewarding To The People On Top.

Focus On Your Customers And Lead Your People As Though Their Lives Depend On Your Success.

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

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

I've Never Been Very Fully Employed Either.

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

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

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

Today People Who Hold Cash Equivalents Feel Comfortable. They Shouldn't. They Have Opted For A Terrible Long-term Asset, One That Pays Virtually Nothing And Is Certain To Depreciate In Value.

I Think It Will Get Moving Faster. I Mean Once You Get It Off The - Once Credit Flows - Now The Recession Is Going To Get Worse.

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

If You Own A Wonderful Business...the Best Thing To Do Is Keep It. All You're Going To Do Is Trade Your Wonderful Business For A Whole Bunch Of Cash, Which Isn't As Good As The Business, And You Got The Problem Of Investing In Other Businesses, And You Probably Paid A Tax In Between. So My Advice To Anybody Who Owns A Wonderful Business Is Keep It.

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.

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.

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

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

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

The Single Most Important Decision In Evaluating A Business Is Pricing Power.

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

The Key To Investing Is Not Assessing How Much An Industry Is Going To Affect Society, Or How Much It Will Grow, But Rather Determining The Competitive Advantage Of Any Given Company And, Above All, The Durability Of That Advantage.

I Really Like My Life. I've Arranged My Life So That I Can Do What I Want.

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

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

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

Much Success Can Be Attributed To Inactivity. Most Investors Cannot Resist The Temptation To Constantly Buy And Sell.

Paradoxically, When 'dumb' Money Acknowledges Its Limitations, It Ceases To Be Dumb.

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

[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).

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

What Motivates Most Gold Purchasers Is Their Belief That The Ranks Of The Fearful Will Grow. During The Past Decade That Belief Has Proved Correct. Beyond That, The Rising Price Has On Its Own Generated Additional Buying Enthusiasm, Attracting Purchasers Who See The Rise As Validating An Investment Thesis. As 'bandwagon' Investors Join Any Party, They Create Their Own Truth - For A While.

Either They're Trying To Con You Or They're Trying To Con Themselves.

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

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

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.

Do What You Love And Work For Whom You Admire The Most, And You've Given Yourself The Best Chance In Life You Can.

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

Don't Risk What Is Important To You, To Get What Is Not Important To You.

It's A Nightmare To Administer Some Of This Sort Of Thing, But I Want To Tell The Shareholders Of Berkshire, To The Percent We Own Marketable Securities Or Things For Which There Are Market, Even If Those Markets - I Want To Tell Them What It's All About.

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.

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

Earnings Can Be Pliable As Putty When A Charlatan Heads The Company Reporting Them.

One Observer Commenting On Security Analysts Over Forty Stated: "they Know Too Many Things That Are No Longer True." As Long As I Am "on Stage", Publishing A Regular Record And Assuming Responsibility For Management Of What Amounts To Virtually 100% Of The Net Worth Of Many Partners, I Will Never Be Able To Put Sustained Effort Into Any Non-bpl Activity. If I Am Going To Participate Publicly. I Can't Help Being Competitive. I Know I Don't Want To Be Totally Occupied With Out-pacing An Investment Rabbit All My Life. The Only Way To Slow Down Is To Stop.

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 The Brothel Burns Down, Even The Pretty Girls Have To Run Out.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Investing Money

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

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.

The Secret To Happiness Is Having Low Expectations.

I Mean, We'll Be Pounding On The Guy's Chest, You Know, On The Floor, And You Know, He's Not Going To Just Jump Up All Of A Sudden. So It Makes It Tough. I Mean, It's Tough To Be In The Legislature, You Know, And Vote For Something And Then People Say, Well, You Voted All This Money And You Know, It's All Getting Spent. It Isn't Getting Spent. It's Getting Invested. But It's All Getting Spent. Nothing's Happening.

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

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

Our Favorite Holding Period Is Forever.

Funny Inspirational

In The End We Must Have People To Match Our Principles, Not The Reverse.

A Stock Doesn't Know That You Own It.

We've Long Felt That The Only Value Of Stock Forecasters Is To Make Fortune Tellers Look Good. Even Now, Charlie And I Continue To Believe That Short-term Market Forecasts Are Poison And Should Be Kept Locked Up In A Safe Place, Away From Children And Also From Grown-ups Who Behave In The Market Like Children.

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

Problems In A Company Are Like Cockroaches In The Kitchen. You Will Never Find Just One

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

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

It's Easier To Create Money Than To Spend It.

Exercise Humility And Restraint.

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

Doing What You Love

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

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 Will Continue To Ignore Political And Economic Forecasts, Which Are An Expensive Distraction For Many Investors And Businessmen. Thirty Years Ago, No One Could Have Foreseen The Huge Expansion Of The Vietnam War, Wage And Price Controls, Two Oil Shocks, The Resignation Of A President, The Dissolution Of The Soviet Union, A One-day Drop In The Dow Of 508 Points, Or Treasury Bill Yields Fluctuating Between 2.8% And 17.4%.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Never Invest In A Business You Can't Understand

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.

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.

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

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

I Think It's Been, You Know, Kind Of Like A Tragic Play To This Point. But At This Point, I Think It's Clear, And Will Be Clear To The Majority Of The Congress. I Think It's Clear To The American People That There Is Only One Countervailing Force To A World Where Financial Institutions Are Trying To Sell Instruments Every Day And Where Credit Has Dried Up, And That's The United States Treasury.

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

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

Investing Money

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.

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

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.

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

I Choose To Work With Every Single Person That I Work With. That Ends Up Being The Most Important Factor. I Don't Interact With People I Don't Like Or Admire. That's The Key. It's Like Marrying.

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.

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

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

There Are All Kinds Of Businesses That Charlie And I Don't Understand, But That Doesn't Cause Us To Stay Up At Night. It Just Means We Go On To The Next One, And That's What The Individual Investor Should Do.

I Don't Like What's Going On With The Executive Compensation.

Executive Compensation

Anyone Who Believes A Growth Rate In Excess Of 15% Per Annum Over The Long Term Is Attainable Should Pursue A Career In Sales, But Avoid One In Mathematics.

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

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.

Nothing Sedates Rationality Like Large Doses Of Effortless Money.

Investing Money

I Mean The Truth Is, I've Never Had It So Good In Terms Of Taxes. I Am Paying The Lowest Tax Rate That I've Ever Paid In My Life.

You Could Take All The Gold That's Ever Been Mined, And It Would Fill A Cube 67 Feet In Each Direction. For What That's Worth At Current Gold Prices, You Could Buy All -- Not Some -- All Of The Farmland In The United States. Plus, You Could Buy 10 Exxon Mobils, Plus Have $1 Trillion Of Walking-around Money. Or You Could Have A Big Cube Of Metal. Which Would You Take? Which Is Going To Produce More Value?

Never Do Anything In Life If You Would Be Ashamed Of Seeing It Printed On The Front Page Of Your Hometown Newspaper For Your Friends And Family To See.

Family And Friends

You Can Lose Leverage, And It's The Only Way A Smart Guy Can Go Broke.

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

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

The Investor Of Today Does Not Profit From Yesterday's Growth.

Investing Money

I Don't Know That I Could Draw One That's Perfect. But I'd Rather By Approximately Right Than Precisely Wrong, And It Would Be Precisely Wrong To Turn It Down.

Someone's Sitting In The Shade Today Because Someone Planted A Tree A Long Time Ago. The Person Sitting In The Shade Now Should Be Grateful For The Person Who Planted And Tended That Tree. That Includes All Those Benefactors Of Humanity Throughout History That Created, Invented, Financed, Produced, Maintained And Improved All That We Enjoy Today.

The Key To Success Is Emotional Stability.

If I Eat 2,700 Calories A Day, A Quarter Of That Is Coca-cola.

If You Want To Soar Like An Eagle In Life, You Can't Be Flocking With The Turkeys.

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.

So Smile When You Read A Headline That Says "investors Lose As Market Falls." Edit It In Your Mind To "disinvestors Lose As Market Falls-but Investors Gain." Though Writers Often Forget This Truism, There Is A Buyer For Every Seller And What Hurts One Necessarily Helps The Other. (as They Say In Golf Matches: "every Putt Makes Someone Happy.")

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.

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

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

You Shouldn't Own Common Stocks If A 50 Per Cent Decrease In Their Value In A Short Period Of Time Would Cause You Acute Distress.

Investing Your Time

Investors Should Remember That Excitement And Expenses Are Their Enemies.

Investing Money

Investment Success

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

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.

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.

Does Management Resist The Institutional Imperative?

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

I Am Not Worried About The Country. I'm Just Worried About Anything That Gums Up The Potential Of The Country. And Right Now, It's Pretty Gummed Up.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

[people] Have Seen The Credit Market Seize Up. They're Worried About Money Market Funds, Although The Latest Proposition From Government Should Take Care Of That. They've Seen Eight Percent Of The Bank Deposits In The United States Get Moved Very Skillfully, I Might Say, Within The Last Couple Of Weeks From Institutions That They Thought Were Fine A Few Months Ago To Other Institutions. They Are Not Wrong To Be Worried.

Outstanding Long-term Results Are Produced Primarily By Avoiding Dumb Decisions, Rather Than By Making Brilliant Ones.

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.

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

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

[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.

A Public-opinion Poll Is No Substitute For Thought.

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

Cash, Though, Is To A Business As Oxygen Is To An Individual: Never Thought About When It Is Present, The Only Thing In Mind When It Is Absent... When Bills Come Due, Only Cash Is Legal Tender. Don't Leave Home Without It.

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

I Certainly Do Believe Anyone Engaged In The Management Of Money Should Have A Standard Of Measurement, And That Both He And The Party Whose Money Is Managed Should Have A Clear Understanding Why It Is The Appropriate Standard, What Time Period Should Be Utilized, Etc.

Getting Fired Can Produce A Particularly Bountiful Payday For A Ceo. Indeed, He Can 'earn' More In That Single Day, While Cleaning Out His Desk, Than An American Worker Earns In A Lifetime Of Cleaning Toilets. Forget The Old Maxim About Nothing Succeeding Like Success: Today, In The Executive Suite, The All-too-prevalent Rule Is That Nothing Succeeds Like Failure.

Of The Billionaires I Have Known, Money Just Brings Out The Basic Traits In Them. If They Were Jerks Before They Had Money, They Are Simply Jerks With A Billion Dollars.

Having First Rate People On The Team Is More Important Than Designing Hierarchies And Clarifying Who Reports To Whom.

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

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

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

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

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.

How Do You Beat Bobby Fischer? You Play Him At Any Game But Chess. I Try To Stay In Games Where I Have An Edge.

We All Make Mistakes. If You Can't Make Mistakes, You Can't Make Decisions. I've Made A Lot Bigger Mistakes Myself.

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.

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.

Focus Alone Is Not Enough; Putting In The Time To Commit Is Also Crucial To Achieve Success.

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.

I Like To Buy Things I Can Understand. I Do A Lot Of Research On Things.

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.

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

I Would Say That Life At 84, I Am Having As Much Fun As I've Ever Had In My Life. I Mean I Get To Do What I Love Every Day With The People I Love-and It Just Doesn't Get Any Better Than That.

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

My Favorite Time Frame For Holding A Stock Is Forever.

The Best Investment You Can Make Is In Yourself.

Investment Success

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.

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.

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

I Don't Think It Would Be Crazy To Have A Model Or An Entity Model On The Reconstruction Finance Corp.

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.

You Really Don't Need Leverage In This World Much. If You're Smart, You're Going To Make A Lot Of Money Without Borrowing. I've Never Borrowed A Significant Amount Of Money In My Life. Never. Never Will. I've Got No Interest In It.

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.

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

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

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

Time Is The Friend Of The Wonderful Company, The Enemy Of The Mediocre.

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.

If You're Extremely Rich, And You Have Got Children, My Theory Was, You Give Them Enough So They Can Do Anything, But Not Enough So They Can Do Nothing.

The Woman That Comes In, Takes The Wastebasket Away, She's Paying 15.3 Or Whatever It Is On Payroll Tax Alone. I Mean It Is - I Never Had It So Good.

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.

Beware Of Geeks Bearing Formulas.

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.'

Many Stock Options In The Corporate World Have Worked In Exactly That Fashion: They Have Gained In Value Simply Because Management Retained Earnings, Not Because It Did Well With The Capital In Its Hands.

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

Guarantees That

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.

I've Often Felt There Might Be More To Be Gained By Studying Business Failures Than Business Successes.

Business Success

Always Invest For The Long Term.

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

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.

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.

Your Premium Brand Had Better Be Delivering Something Special, Or It's Not Going To Get The Business.

Over The Years, Charlie [munger, Berkshire Hathaway Vice Chairman] And I Have Observed Many Accounting-based Frauds Of Staggering Size. Few Of The Perpetrators Have Been Punished; Many Have Not Even Been Censured. It Has Been Far Safer To Steal Large Sums With Pen Than Small Sums With A Gun.

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