Background Image

...

We Have To Live With The Rest Of The World. And It's A Mistake, In My View. Trade Has Generally Developed In This Country. We Actually Export 12 Or 13 Percent Of Our Gdp. It Was Only 5 Percent In 1970. But It Benefits Us. It Benefits The Rest Of The World. It Doesn't Benefit The Steelworker Maybe In Ohio. And That's The Problem That Has To Be Addressed, Because When You Have Something That's Good For Society, But Terribly Harmful For Given Individuals, We Have Got To Make Sure Those Individuals Are Taken Care Of.

-Warren Buffett

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

We Have To Live

Warren Buffett

...

We Have To Live With The Rest Of The World. And It's A Mistake, In My View. Trade Has Generally Developed In This Country. We Actually Export 12 Or 13 Percent Of Our Gdp. It Was Only 5 Percent In 1970. But It Benefits Us. It Benefits The Rest Of The World. It Doesn't Benefit The Steelworker Maybe In Ohio. And That's The Problem That Has To Be Addressed, Because When You Have Something That's Good For Society, But Terribly Harmful For Given Individuals, We Have Got To Make Sure Those Individuals Are Taken Care Of.

Views: 44543

Topic

More From Warren Buffett

Always Associate Yourself With People Who Are Better Than You.

I Don't Want To Give A Lecture To This Body That's Out There. You Know, I Mean, Having Had The Heart Attack, I Want To Get It Back Functioning. And As A Practical Matter, I Mean If You Were Bear Stearns, And You Were A Shareholder, You Know, You Lost 90 To 95 Percent Of Your Money. A Good Many Lost Their Jobs. They Lost Very Cushy Lives, Many Of Them.

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

I Think People - What People Want To Do Is Make [economy] Get Worse.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My Father Was The Best Person I've Ever Known.

I Look At Everything. That's My Job. I Really Do, Every Day. I Think About Everything.

Does Management Resist The Institutional Imperative?

We Do Not View The Company Itself As The Ultimate Owner Of Our Business Assets But Instead View The Company As A Conduit Through Which Our Shareholders Own Assets.

What You Really Want To Do In Investments Is Figure Out What's Important And Knowable. If It's Unimportant Or Unknowable You Forget About It.

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.

Your Money Can Be Inflated Away But Your Knowledge And Talent Cannot.

Very Successful People Say No To Almost Everything.

Investment Success

Money To Some Extent Sometimes Let You Be In More Interesting Environments. But It Can't Change How Many People Love You Or How Healthy You Are.

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.

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

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

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 Never Invest In Anything That I Don't Understand.

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

Unless Your Answers Are Clearly Better, Copy The Answers Of Your Betters.

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.

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

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

Stocks Are The Only Thing That People Are Happy To Buy When The Price Goes Up.

Our Stay-put Behavior Reflects Our View That The Stock Market Serves As A Relocation Center At Which Money Is Moved From The Active To The Patient.

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.

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

People Should Always Know Better.

If You Do Smart Things And Use Leverage And Do One Wrong Thing Along The Way, It Could Wipe You Out, Because Anything Times Zero Is Zero. But It's Reinforcing When The People Around You Are Doing It Successfully, You're Doing It Successfully, And It's A Lot Like Cinderella At The Ball.

I Know That Congress Will Do The Right Thing.

Charlie And I Decided Long Ago That In An Investment Lifetime, It's Too Hard To Make Hundreds Of Smart Decisions. That Judgment Became Ever More Compelling As Berkshire's Capital Mushroomed And The Universe Of Investments That Could Significantly Affect Our Results Shrank Dramatically. Therefore, We Adopted A Strategy That Required Our Being Smart And Not Too Smart At That, Only A Very Few Times. Indeed, We Now Settle For One Good Idea A Year.

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

In The Long Run Managements Stressing Accounting Appearance Over Economic Substance Usually Achieve Little Of Either.

You've Got The Right - You've Got A Wonderful Person With Sheila Bair, Most Of The Viewers Have Never Heard Of Sheila Bair. [she] Has Taken Eight Percent Of The Deposits In The United States And Seamlessly Moved Those Over To Sound Institutions Which In Turn Have Gotten More Capital, Ended Up, It's Been A Magnificent Job.she'll Never Get A Golden Parachute Or Any Severance Pay Or Anything. She's Done A Great Job. We've Got Some Great Public Servants. We Have I Think The Right People In There To Get The Job Done, And Then They Need More Tools.

If You've Been Playing Poker For Half An Hour And You Still Don't Know Who The Patsy Is, You're The Patsy.

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.

Valuing A Business Is Part Art And Part Science.

The Worst Sort Of Business Is One That Grows Rapidly, Requires Significant Capital To Engender The Growth, And Then Earns Little Or No Money. Think Airlines. Here A Durable Competitive Advantage Has Proven Elusive Ever Since The Days Of The Wright Brothers. Indeed, If A Farsighted Capitalist Had Been Present At Kitty Hawk, He Would Have Done His Successors A Huge Favor By Shooting Orville Down.

Over The Years, A Number Of Very Smart People Have Learned The Hard Way That A Long String Of Impressive Numbers Multiplied By A Single Zero Always Equals Zero.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

Knowing The Edge Of Your Competency Is Important. If You Think You Know More Than You Do, You Will Get In Trouble.

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

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.

The Stock Market Is Designed To Transfer Money From The Active To The Patient.

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

When Berkshire Hathaway Laid Out Three Billion Dollars For Ge Today, We Didn't Spend It, We Invested It. When The Federal Government Buys The Mortgages, They're Not Spending It, They're Investing It. Now, They're Investing It In Distress Type Assets But They're Buying Them At Distress Prices If They Buy Them At Market. It's The Kind Of Stuff I Love To Do. I Just Don't Have 700 Million. Maybe We Could Go In It Together.

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

The Nature Of Democracy Is Such That When There's - There'll Be Revulsion, Obviously, Towards - That's Never Going To Happen Again.

I Think Once You Start Putting Phony Figures Into Financial Statements, You Get In A Lot Of Trouble. And We've Seen So Much Of That In The Last 20 Years.

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.

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

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.

What An Investor Needs Is The Ability To Correctly Evaluate Selected Businesses. Note That Word “selected”: You Don't Have To Be An Expert On Every Company, Or Even Many. You Only Have To Be Able To Evaluate Companies Within Your Circle Of Competence. The Size Of That Circle Is Not Very Important; Knowing Its Boundaries, However, Is Vital.

Would You Rather Be The World's Greatest Lover, But Have Everyone Think You're The World's Worst Lover? Or Would You Rather Be The World's Worst Lover But Have Everyone Think You're The World's Greatest Lover? Now, That's An Interesting Question.

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?

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

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.

If You Know How To Value Businesses, It's Crazy To Own 50 Stocks Or 40 Stocks Or 30 Stocks, Probably Because There Aren't That Many Wonderful Businesses Understandable To A Single Human Being In All Likelihood. To Forego Buying More Of Some Super-wonderful Business And Instead Put Your Money Into #30 Or #35 On Your List Of Attractiveness Just Strikes Charlie And Me As Madness.

With A Wonderful Business, You Can Figure Out What Will Happen; You Can't Figure Out When It Will Happen. You Don't Want To Focus On When, You Want To Focus On What. If You're Right About What, You Don't Have To Worry About When

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

I Think You Should Read Everything You Can. In My Case, By The Age Of 10, I'd Read Every Book In The Omaha Public Library About Investing, Some Twice. You Need To Fill Your Mind With Various Competing Thoughts And Decide Which Make Sense.

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

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

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.

I Think The Fdic Was One Of The Great Inventions Of The American.

Great Inventions

Making Money Isn't The Backbone Of Our Guiding Purpose; Making Money Is The By-product Of Our Guiding Purpose. If You're Doing Something You Love, You're More Likely To Put Your All Into It, And That Generally Equates To Making Money

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.

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

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

Investing Money

Never Invest In A Business You Don't Understand.

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.

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.

Forecasts May Tell You A Great Deal About The Forecaster; They Tell You Nothing About The Future.

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 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.

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

We've Got More Productive Capacity Now Than We Ever Have.

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

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

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

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

You Are Lucky In Life If You Have The Right Heroes. I Advise All Of You, To The Extent You Can, To Pick Out A Few Heroes

If You Can't Read The Scoreboard. You Don't Know The Score. If You Don't Know The Score, You Can't Tell The Winners From The Losers.

John Maynard Keynes Essentially Said, Don't Try And Figure Out What The Market Is Doing. Figure Out A Business You Understand, And Concentrate.

I've Seen More People Fail Because Of Liquor And Leverage -- Leverage Being Borrowed Money. You Really Don't Need Leverage In This World Much. If You're Smart, You're Going To Make A Lot Of Money Without Borrowing.

Investing Money

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

The Three Most Important Words In Investing...margin Of Safety.

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

Passion For What You Do

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.

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.

If I Knew Where I Was Going To Want To Live The Next Five Or 10 Years I Would Buy A Home And I'd Finance It With A 30-year Mortgage... It's A Terrific Deal.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

First, Many In Wall Street - A Community In Which Quality Control Is Not Prized - Will Sell Investors Anything They Will Buy.

America Should Stand For More Than Just Wealth.

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.

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

In The Search [of A Deal], We Adopt The Same Attitude One Might Find Appropriate In Looking For A Spouse: It Pays To Be Active, Interested, And Open-minded, But It Does Not Pay To Be In A Hurry.

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

I Don't Really Think That, As A Society, We [americans] Want To Confer Blessings On Generation After Generation Who Contribute Nothing To Society, Simply Because Somebody In The Far Distant Past Happened To Amass A Great Sum Of Wealth.

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.

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

Have Confidence

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.

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

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.

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

The Best Investment You Can Make Is In Yourself.

Investment Success

The Ideal Business Is One That Earns Very High Returns On Capital And That Keeps Using Lots Of Capital At Those High Returns. That Becomes A Compounding Machine.

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

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

I Mean, In Terms Of Alternatives, Some People Have Suggested For Example That Why Don't We - Why Isn't America Doing What Berkshire Hathaway Is Doing? Why Isn't That A Better Deal For America?

If You Don't Feel Comfortable Owning Something For 10 Years, Then Don't Own It For 10 Minutes.

Is Management Rational?

When People Tell Me They've Learned From Experience, I Tell Them The Trick Is To Learn From Other People's Experience.

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

Do Not Put All Your Eggs In One Basket.

Investment Success

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

Business Success

In Other Words, The Percentage Change In Book Value In Any Given Year Is Likely To Be Reasonably Close To That Year's Change In Intrinsic Value.

Resolution Trust Company Was Set Up To Liquidate A Bunch Of Assets That The Government Had Inherited Because The Savings And Loans Went Broke.

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

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.

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

None Of This Means, However, That A Business Or Stock Is An Intelligent Purchase Simply Because It Is Unpopular; A Contrarian Approach Is Just As Foolish As A Follow-the-crowd Strategy. What's Required Is Thinking Rather Than Polling. Unfortunately, Bertrand Russell's Observation About Life In General Applies With Unusual Force In The Financial World: "most Men Would Rather Die Than Think. Many Do."

The Most Common Cause Of Low Prices Is Pessimism - Sometimes Pervasive, Sometimes Specific To A Company Or Industry. We Want To Do Business In Such An Environment, Not Because We Like Pessimism But Because We Like The Prices It Produces.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Our Favorite Holding Period Is Forever.

Funny Inspirational

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

Investors Should Remember That Their Scorecard Is Not Computed Using Olympic-diving Methods: Degree-of-difficulty Doesn't Count. If You Are Right About A Business Whose Value Is Largely Dependent On A Single Key Factor That Is Both Easy To Understand And Enduring, The Payoff Is The Same As If You Had Correctly Analyzed An Investment Alternative Characterized By Many Constantly Shifting And Complex Variables.

Always Invest For The Long Term.

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.

A Stock Doesn't Know That You Own It.

In Our View, Though, Investment Students Need Only Two Well-taught Courses-how To Value A Business, And How To Think About Market Prices. Your Goal As An Investor Should Simply Be To Purchase, At A Rational Price, A Part Interest In An Easily-understandable Business Who's Earnings Are Virtually Certain To Be Materially Higher Five, Ten And Twenty Years From Now.

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

The Best Thing I Did Was Choose The Right Heroes.

If You Knew What Was Going To Happen In The Economy, You Still Wouldn't Necessarily Know What Was Going To Happen In The Stock Market.

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

I Have Never Been Able To Understand Why The Tax Comes As Such A Body Blow To Many People Since The Rate On Long-term Capital Gain Is Lower Than On Most Likes Of Endeavor (tax Policy Indicated Digging Ditches Is Regarded As Socially Less Desirable Than Shuffling Stock Certificates).

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.

I Know The Country Works Extremely Well. You Know, But When It Isn't Clogged Up.

To Win, The First Thing You Have To Do Is Not Lose.

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

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

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

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.

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.

All But A Few Of The Organizations Do Not Specifically Promise To Deliver Superior Investment Performance Although It Is Perhaps Not Unreasonable For The Public To Draw Such An Inference From Their Advertised Emphasis On Professional Management.

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

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

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.

This Country Is Going - Be Living Better Ten Years From Now Than It Is Now. It Will Be Living Better In 20 Years From Now Than Ten Years From Now. The Ingredients That Made This Country, You Know, The Miracle Of The World - I Mean We Had A Seven For One Improvement In The Average American Standard Of Living In The 20th Century.

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

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

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

Learn From Your Mistakes

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

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

You Should Invest Like A Catholic Marries: For Life.

Economic Medicine That Was Previously Meted Out By The Cupful Has Recently Been Dispensed By The Barrel. These Once Unthinkable Dosages Will Almost Certainly Bring On Unwelcome After-effects. Their Precise Nature Is Anyone's Guess, Though One Likely Consequence Is An Onslaught Of Inflation.

There Is No Staff. I Make All The Investment Decisions And I Do All My Own Analysis.

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

I Have Pledged - To You, The Rating Agencies And Myself - To Always Run Berkshire With More Than Ample Cash. We Never Want To Count On The Kindness Of Strangers In Order To Meet Tomorrow's Obligations. When Forced To Choose, I Will Not Trade Even A Night's Sleep For The Chance Of Extra Profits.

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

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

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.

I’ve Never Believed In Risking What My Family And Friends Have And Need In Order To Pursue What They Don’t Have And Don’t Need.

Family And Friends

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

Trending Author

Category