Quotes About Valuation

Knowledge is only one ingredient on arriving at a stock's proper price. The other ingredient, fully as important as information, is sound judgment.

Someone once said, "Think about the things you'd most hate to lose (outside of your family), and you'll identify your idols." These are not only the things we treasure too much but what we've likely lost perspective on. We place this stuff on a pedestal that wasn't built for it. If we're not careful, TV can become this.

The definition of gross national product is nonsense, because they don't put such factors as environmental damage and limited resources into the calculation. In the mean time there is another parameter, the gross domestic product, but this is not much better.

There are a lot of weird things you might find in your basement or your attic that may have a lot of value.

I buy companies I want to own. I buy companies that make a lot of money, that don't have a lot of debt, and that I can understand.

Your tax returns on a yearly basis don't tell you what you're worth. What they show is what your income is.

Last summer, after Groupon selected Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Credit Suisse to underwrite its initial public offering, the trio valued Groupon at a generous $30 billion. Subsequent accounting and disclosure problems showed this estimate to be absurdly high. But the banks didn't care a whit. The higher the valuation, the fatter their fees.

The word bubble creates a mental picture of an expanding soap bubble, which is destined to pop suddenly and irrevocably. But speculative bubbles are not so easily ended; indeed, they may deflate somewhat, as the story changes, and then reflate.

Is the market high only because of some irrational exuberance — wishful thinking on the part of investors that blinds us to the truth of our situation?

Your profit is made when you buy, not when you sell." Every property we bought had to have a positive cash flow on the day we bought it, and it had to have a positive cash flow even in a bad economy.

Valuing a business is part art and part science.

The price investors paid for IBM was just too high. Even though the computer giant trumped Standard Oil on growth, Standard Oil trumped IBM on valuation, and valuation determines investor returns.

Although those who wait long enough will eventually recoup losses on a diversified portfolio of stocks, buying stocks at or below their historical valuation is the best way to guarantee superior returns.

Trying to force people to conform their work to preestablished numerical goals tends to stifle innovation and creativity—valuable qualities in most settings. And it almost inevitably leads to a valuation of short-term goals over long-term purposes.

WhatsApp will bring Facebook another billion users. We will be a billion-user product. Whether there is a direct valuation or an indirect valuation, there is value, and Facebook understands that well.

The most objective measurement we have is that the market actually valued the two split Ethereums more than it valued the one original Ethereum; the market viewed it as a good thing, and I don't see it as any sort of disaster whatsoever.

The enthusiasm for Tesla and other bubble-basket stocks is reminiscent of the March 2000 dot-com bubble. As was the case then, the bulls rejected conventional valuation methods for a handful of stocks that seemingly could only go up. While we don't know exactly when the bubble will pop, it eventually will.

I think when you get interested in antiques, the most frustrating thing is that books don't have enough photos. When you go to a flea market or garage sale, you see lots of things you've never seen before and you have no idea what the price is going to be or should be.

You know what I learned? Everything has a price.

In a bubble, eventually people start saying, 'Wait a minute... these prices are way too high! What is anyone buying anymore? What could they possibly be thinking?' And then there's a correction and a bursting.

People forget that although we can pinpoint the price, we can only guess at future earnings. The past isn't much help: It simply tells whether a market was pricey or cheap.

Robert J. Shiller

During a bubble, we often hear stories about how some grand new era makes previous valuation standards obsolete.

The endowment effect has obvious applications to quitting behavior. Selling something you own is the equivalent of quitting; you are quitting your ownership. Not selling something you own is a form of persistence. When you are deciding whether to sell your wine, or your car, or your house, you are choosing whether or not to persist in owning those things.