Background Image

...

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. You May Find Local Companies That Have Nothing Wrong With Them At All. A Company That I Found, Western Insurance Securities, Was Trading For $3/share When It Was Earning $20/share!! I Tried To Buy Up As Much Of It As Possible. No One Will Tell You About These Businesses. You Have To Find Them.

-Warren Buffett

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

You Have To Turn

Warren Buffett

...

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. You May Find Local Companies That Have Nothing Wrong With Them At All. A Company That I Found, Western Insurance Securities, Was Trading For $3/share When It Was Earning $20/share!! I Tried To Buy Up As Much Of It As Possible. No One Will Tell You About These Businesses. You Have To Find Them.

Views: 4

Topic

More From Warren Buffett

We Set No Volume Goals In Our Insurance Business Generally-and Certainly Not In Reinsurance-as Virtually Any Volume Can Be Achieved If Profitability Standards Are Ignored.

The .350 Hitter Expects, And Also Deserves, A Big Payoff For His Performance - Even If He Plays For A Cellar-dwelling Team. And A .150 Hitter Should Get No Reward - Even If He Plays For A Pennant Winner.

Learning How To Live Is Much More Important Than Learning How To Make A Living.

Inspirational Life

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

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.

Don't Pass Up Something That's Attractive Today Because You Think You Will Find Something Way More Attractive Tomorrow.

If Past History Was All There Was To The Game, The Richest People Would Be Librarians.

Who Would Think Of Buying Or Selling A Private Business Because Of Someone's Guess On The Stock Market? The Availability Of A Quotation For Your Business Interest (stock) Should Always Be An Asset To Be Utilized If Desired. If It Gets Silly Enough In Either Direction, You Take Advantage Of It. Its Availability Should Never Be Turned Into A Livability Whereby Its Periodic Aberrations In Turn Formulate Your Judgements.

My Favorite Time Frame For Holding A Stock Is Forever.

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.

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.

I Have A Wonderful Family. I Have A Job That I Love And Wonderful People Who Help Me With It. It Can't Get Any Better Than That.

I Buy Expensive Suits - They Just Look Cheap On Me.

The Business Schools Reward Difficult Complex Behavior More Than Simple Behavior, But Simple Behavior Is More Effective.

It's A Big Mistake To Try And Mislead People. They Will Turn Around.

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

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 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.

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

I Certainly Have No Desire To Sell A Good Controlled Business Run By People I Like And Admire, Merely To Obtain A Fancy Price. However, Specific Conditions May Cause The Sale Of One Operating Unit At Some Point.

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.'

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

Our Policy Is To Concentrate Holdings. We Try To Avoid Buying A Little Of This Or That When We Are Only Lukewarm About The Business Or Its Price. When We Are Convinced As To Attractiveness, We Believe In Buying Worthwhile Amounts.

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.

If You Understood A Business Perfectly And The Future Of The Business, You Would Need Very Little In The Way Of A Margin Of Safety. So, The More Vulnerable The Business Is, Assuming You Still Want To Invest In It, The Larger Margin Of Safety You'd Need. If You're Driving A Truck Across A Bridge That Says It Holds 10,000 Pounds And You've Got A 9,800 Pound Vehicle, If The Bridge Is 6 Inches Above The Crevice It Covers, You May Feel Okay, But If It's Over The Grand Canyon, You May Feel You Want A Little Larger Margin Of Safety.

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

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

Turnarounds Seldom Turn.

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

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

I Mean, You May Be Very Mad At Some Guy That Walked Away With A Huge Golden Parachute, But That Really Isn't The Important Thing.

Investors, Of Course, Can, By Their Own Behavior Make Stock Ownership Highly Risky. And Many Do. Active Trading, Attempts To "time" Market Movements, Inadequate Diversification, The Payment Of High And Unnecessary Fees To Managers And Advisors, And The Use Of Borrowed Money Can Destroy The Decent Returns That A Life-long Owner Of Equities Would Otherwise Enjoy. Indeed, Borrowed Money Has No Place In The Investor's Tool Kit.

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

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.

People Should Always Know Better.

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

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

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

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

...i Will Give You Two Pieces Of Advice. Invest As Much In Yourself As You Can; You Are Your Own Best Asset By Far. Then Follow Your Passion; You Want To Be Really Excited To Get Out Of Bed Every Morning.

I Do Know That When I Am 60, I Should Be Attempting To Achieve Different Personal Goals Than Those Which Had Priority At Age 20.

Investing Is Simple, But Not Easy.

When They Get Their Ego Involved, People Do Things They Shouldn't Do.

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

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

Investing Money

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

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

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

If Aig Had Tried To Unwind Their Derivatives Books. I Don't Know. It Would Have Hit Every Institution In The World.

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

Most Investors, Both Institutional And Individual, Will Find That The Best Way To Own Common Stocks (shares') Is Through An Index Fund That Charges Minimal Fees. Those Following This Path Are Sure To Beat The Net Results (after Fees And Expenses) Of The Great Majority Of Investment Professionals.

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).

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

Look For 3 Things In A Person. Intelligence, Energy, & Integrity. If They Don't Have The Last One, Don't Even Bother With The First Two.

Mr. Market Is Kind Of A Drunken Psycho. Some Days He Gets Very Enthused, Some Days He Gets Very Depressed. And When He Get Really Enthused You Sell To Him, And If He Gets Depressed, You Buy From Him. There's No Moral Taint Attached To That.

The Noah Rule: Predicting Rain Doesn't Count; Building Arks Does.

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

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

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

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.

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 Less Prudence With Which Others Conduct Their Affairs, The Greater The Prudence With Which We Should Conduct Our Own Affairs.

Asset Values And Earning Power Are The Dominant Factors Affecting The Valuation Of A Controlling Interest In A Business. Market Price, Which Governs Valuation Of Minority Interest Positions, Is Of Little Or No Importance In Valuing A Controlling Interest.

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%.

Managers That Always Promise To 'make The Numbers' Will At Some Point Be Tempted To Make Up The Numbers.

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.

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

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.

Businesses Always Have Opportunities To Improve Service, Product Lines, Manufacturing Techniques, And The Like, And Obviously These Opportunities Should Be Seized. But A Business That Constantly Encounters Major Change Also Encounters Many Chances For Major Error

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

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?

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.

The Best Way In My View Is To Just Buy A Low-cost Index Fund And Keep Buying It Regularly Over Time, Because You'll Be Buying Into A Wonderful Industry, Which In Effect Is All Of American Industry... People Ought To Sit Back And Relax And Keep Accumulating Over Time.

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.

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

I Get To Do What I Like To Do Every Single Day Of The Year.

Emotional Makeup Is More Important Than Technical Skill

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.

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

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

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

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.

I've Read About All The Sales Today. If You're An Auto Dealer, You're Feeling It. If You're A Furniture Retailer Like We Are, You're Feeling It. If You're A Jewelry Retailer, You're Feeling It. I Know Some Of These Businesses Because We're In Them. Yeah, It's Being Felt, But It Will Be Felt Big Time More If We Don't Do Something About It, What's Going On.

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

Generally Speaking, Investing In Yourself Is The Best Thing You Can Do. Anything That Improves Your Own Talents; Nobody Can Tax It Or Take It Away From You. They Can Run Up Huge Deficits And The Dollar Can Become Worth Far Less. You Can Have All Kinds Of Things Happen. But If You’ve Got Talent Yourself, And You’ve Maximized Your Talent, You’ve Got A Tremendous Asset That Can Return Ten-fold.

Market Price, While Used Exclusively To Value Our Investments In Minority Positions, Is Not A Relevant Factor When Applied To Our Controlling Interests.

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.

Anything Can Happen In Stock Markets And You Ought To Conduct Your Affairs So That If The Most Extraordinary Events Happen, That You're Still Around To Play The Next Day.

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 Trick Is, When There Is Nothing To Do, Do Nothing.

I Look For Businesses In Which I Think I Can Predict What They're Going To Look Like In Ten To Fifteen Years Time. Take Wrigley's Chewing Gum. I Don't Think The Internet Is Going To Change How People Chew Gum.

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.

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

Managers Thinking About Accounting Issues Should Never Forget One Of Abraham Lincoln's Favorite Riddles: How Many Legs Does A Dog Have, If You Call A Tail A Leg? The Answer: Four, Because Calling A Tail A Leg Doesn't Make It A Leg.

The Much-maligned Idle Rich Have Received A Bad Rap: They Have Maintained Their Wealth While Many There Is Scarcely An Instance Of A Man Who Has Made A Fortune By Speculation And Kept It. Andrew Carnegie Of The Energetic Rich, Aggressive Real Estate Operators, Corporate Acquirers, Oil Drillers, Etc. Have Their Fortunes Disappear.

The Stockmarket Is A Semi-psychotic Creature Given To Extremes Of Elation And Despair.

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.

It's Better To Build Than To Buy If You Can Find The Right People.

There's Not Many Businesses Where Someone Can Come In And Offer To Cut The Price In Half And Somebody Doesn't Think About Shifting. But That's The Nature Of The Ratings Business.

You Do Not Adequately Protect Yourself By Being Half Awake When Other Are Sleeping.

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

Enjoy Your Work And Work For Whom You Admire.

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

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.

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

Just Imagine Living On 21,000 A Year. I Mean You Have 20 Percent Of The Population Doing That. So You Don't Have To Worry About Guys Like Me.

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.

If I Were The Treasury Secretary Or Head Of The Fed, You Know, I Would Try To Scare The Hell The Out Of The Private Sector And Say, You Better Save This Because You're Going Down With The Ship.

The Difference Between Successful People And Really Successful People Is That Really Successful People Say No To Almost Everything.

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).

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

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

We Can Afford To Lose Money - Even A Lot Of Money. But We Can't Afford To Lose Reputation - Even A Shred Of Reputation.

I Have No Idea On Timing. It’s Easier To Tell What Will Happen Than When It Will Happen. I Would Say That What Is Going On In Terms Of Trade Policy Is Going To Have Very Important Consequences.

It's Better To Hang Out With People Better Than You. Pick Out Associates Whose Behavior Is Better Than Yours And You'll Drift In That Direction.

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

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

During Inflation, Goodwill Is The Gift That Keeps On Giving.

Mental Toughness

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

Never Invest In A Business You Can't Understand

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.

Never Be Afraid To Ask For Too Much When Selling Or Offer Too Little When Buying.

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

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

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

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

I Never Buy Anything Unless I Can Fill Out On A Piece Of Paper My Reasons. I May Be Wrong, But I Would Know The Answer To That ...i'm Paying $32 Billion Today For The Coca Cola Company Because... If You Can't Answer That Question, You Shouldn't Buy It. If You Can Answer That Question, And You Do It A Few Times, You'll Make A Lot Of Money.

Investing Your Time

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

It's Far Better To Buy A Wonderful Company At A Fair Price Than A Fair Company At A Wonderful Price.

Investing Money

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.

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.

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

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

You Know ... You Keep Doing The Same Things And You Keep Getting The Same Result Over And Over Again.

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

There Is Nothing Like Writing To Force You To Think And Get Your Thoughts Straight.

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

It's Quite Clear That Stocks Are Cheaper Than Bonds. I Can't Imagine Anybody Having Bonds In Their Portfolio When They Can Own Equities, A Diversified Group Of Equities. But People Do Because They, The Lack Of Confidence. But That's What Makes For The Attractive Prices. If They Had Their Confidence Back, They Wouldn't Be Selling At These Prices. And Believe Me, It Will Come Back Over Time.

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

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

Taking The High Road

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

Learn From Your Mistakes

I Think The Congress Will Do The Right Thing. I Think That They've - You Know, They Got Into Certain Arguments And They Start Worrying About Assessing Blame, And There Is A Little Demagoguery, But In The End, Something This Important, They'll Do The Right Thing. So This Really Is An Economic Pearl Harbor. That Sounds Melodramatic, But I've Never Used That Phrase Before. And This Really Is One.

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.

When You Build A Bridge, You Insist That It Can Carry 30,000 Pounds, But You Only Drive 10,000-pound Trucks Across It. And That Same Principle Works In Investing.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

The Fact That People Will Be Full Of Greed, Fear, Or Folly Is Predictable. The Sequence Is Not Predictable.

Suppose That An Investor You Admire And Trust Comes To You With An Investment Idea. This Is A Good One, He Says Enthusiastically. I'm In It, And I Think You Should Be, Too.

If, When Making A Stock Investment, You're Not Considering Holding It At Least Ten Years, Don't Waste More Than Ten Minutes Considering It.

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

The Happiest People Do Not Necessarily Have The Best Things. They Simply Appreciate The Things They Have.

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

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.

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

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

I Asked Him What He Wanted To Do For His Career, And He Replied That He Wanted To Go Into A Particular Field, But Thought He Should Work For Mckinsey For A Few Years First To Add To His Resume. To Me That's Like Saving Sex For Your Old Age. It Makes No Sense.

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.

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

If You Cannot Control Your Emotions, You Cannot Control Your Money.

The Most Important Investment You Can Make Is In Yourself. Very Few People Get Anything Like Their Potential Horsepower Translated Into The Actual Horsepower Of Their Output In Life. Potential Exceeds Realization For Many People...the Best Asset Is Your Own Self. You Can Become To An Enormous Degree The Person You Want To Be.

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

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 Own The Only Newspaper In Town, Up Until The Last Five Years Or So, You Have Pricing Power And You Didn't Have To Go To The Office.

It's A Lot Easier To Buy Things Than It Is To Sell Them.

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.

Growth And Value Investing Are Joined At The Hip.

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?

Accounting Consequences Do Not Influence Our Operating Or Capital-allocation Decisions. When Acquisition Costs Are Similar, We Much Prefer To Purchase $2 Of Earnings That Is Not Reportable By Us Under Standard Accounting Principles Than To Purchase $1 Of Earnings That Is Reportable.

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.

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.

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

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.

You Can't Produce A Baby In One Month By Getting Nine Women Pregnant.

Investing Money

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 Checked The Actuarial Tables, And The Lowest Death Rate Is Among Six-year-olds. So I Decided To Eat Like A Six-year-old.

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

I Can Do Anything I Want, Basically, As Long As It Doesn't Involve Athletic Ability, Or Something Like That.

Investors... Can't Pick Stocks That Are Better Than Average. Stocks Are A Good Thing To Own Over Time. There's Only Two Things You Can Do Wrong: You Can Buy The Wrong Ones, And You Can Buy Or Sell Them At The Wrong Time. And The Truth Is You Never Need To Sell Them.

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.

Wall Street Is The Only Place That People Ride To In A Rolls Royce To Get Advice From Those Who Take The Subway.

Investing Money

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

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

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.

Bad Terminology Is The Enemy Of Good Thinking.

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

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.

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

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

The Managers At Fault Periodically Report On The Lesson They Have Learned From The Latest Disappointment. They Then Usually Seek Out Future Lessons.

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

Having A Large Amount Of Leverage Is Like Driving A Car With A Dagger On The Steering Wheel Pointed At Your Heart. If You Do That, You Will Be A Better Driver. There Will Be Fewer Accidents But When They Happen, They Will Be Fatal.

Intrinsic Value Can Be Defined Simply: It Is The Discounted Value Of The Cash That Can Be Taken Out Of A Business During Its Remaining Life. The Calculation Of Intrinsic Value, Though, Is Not So Simple. As Our Definition Suggests, Intrinsic Value Is An Estimate Rather Than A Precise Figure, And It Is Additionally An Estimate That Must Be Changed If Interest Rates Move Or Forecasts Of Future Cash Flows Are Revised.

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

Trending Author

Ellsworth Huntington

Maurice Blanchot

Charles Henry Parkhurst

Jennifer Hudson

Category