Quotes About Investment

The stock market is a device for transferring money from the impatient to the patient.

Our goal is more modest: We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful.

Despite our policy of candor, we will discuss our activities in marketable securities only to the extent legally required. Good investment ideas are rare, valuable and subject to competitive appropriation just as good product or business acquisition ideas are.

It's not that I want money. It's the fun of making money and watching it grow.

A good business is not always a good purchase - although it's a good place to look for one.

A small chance of distress or disgrace cannot, in our view, be offset by a large chance of extra returns.

I could improve your ultimate financial welfare by giving you a ticket with only 20 slots in it so that you had 20 punches—representing all the investments that you got to make in a lifetime. And once you'd punched through the card, you couldn't make any more investments at all. Under those rules, you'd really think carefully about what you did and you'd be forced to load up on what you'd really thought about. So you'd do so much better.

this holding has proved extraordinarily profitable thanks to a move by your Chairman that combined luck and skill—110% luck, the balance skill.

Instead, he takes those coupons from his low-return bond and—if inclined to reinvest—looks for the highest return with safety currently available.  Good money is not thrown after bad.

Do not save what is left after expending, but spend what is left after saving.

Someone's sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree long ago.

Read 500 pages like this every day. That's how knowledge works. It builds up, like compound interest. All of you can do it, but I guarantee not many of you will do it. — Warren Buffett

Stay away from the mentality of using the credit card compulsorily and invest on yourself. Wealth has not created mankind but mankind has created wealth. Live your life in the simplest manner possible.

For these investors, it would have been far better if Orville had failed to get off the ground at Kitty Hawk: The more the industry has grown, the worse the disaster for owners.

an unvaryingly strong liquid position and avoidance of money-market borrowings;

The Great Bubble ended on March 10, 2000 (though we didn't realize that fact until some months later). On that day, the NASDAQ (recently 1,731) hit its all-time high of 5,132. That same day, Berkshire shares traded at $40,800, their lowest price since mid-1997.

References to EBITDA make us shudder — does management think the tooth fairy pays for capital expenditures?

Furthermore, we do not think so-called EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) is a meaningful measure of performance. Managements that dismiss the importance of depreciation - and emphasize cash flow or EBITDA - are apt to make faulty decisions, and you should keep that in mind as you make your own investment decisions

Regardless of the impact upon immediately reportable earnings, we would rather buy 10% of Wonderful Business T at X per share than 100% of T at 2x per share. Most corporate managers prefer just the reverse.

Temperament is also important. Independent thinking, emotional stability, and a keen understanding of both human and institutional behavior is vital to long-term investment success.

Cash combined with courage in a time of crisis is priceless." -Warren Buffett

Predicting the long-term economics of companies that operate in fast-changing industries is simply far beyond our perimeter.

Despite the overriding importance of inflation in the investment equation, we will not punish you further with another full recital of our views; inflation itself will be punishment enough. (Copies of previous discussions are available for masochists.) But, because of the unrelenting destruction of currency values, our corporate efforts will continue to do a much better job of filling your wallet than of filling your stomach.

Our basic principle is that if you want to shoot rare, fast-moving elephants, you should always carry a loaded gun. p217