Quotes About Strategy

I will tell you how to become rich. Close the doors. Be fearful when others are greedy. Be greedy when others are fearful

as happens in Wall Street all too often, what the wise do in the beginning, fools do in the end.

The rich invest in time, the poor invest in money.

Our favorite holding period is forever. We are just the opposite of those who hurry to sell and book profits when companies perform well but who tenaciously hang on to businesses that disappoint. Peter Lynch aptly likens such behavior to cutting the flowers and watering the weeds.

Derivatives are financial weapons of mass destruction.

If you aren't willing to own a stock for ten years, don't even think about owning it for ten minutes.

The only time to buy these is on a day with no 'y' in it.

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

For investors as a whole, returns decrease as motion increases.

My favourite holding period is forever

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

If you've got the power to raise prices without losing business to a competitor, you've got a very good business. If you have to have a prayer session before raising the price by 10%, then you've got a bad business.

Wide diversification is only required when investors do not understand what they are doing.

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.

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

What the wise man does in the beginning, the fool does in the end

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

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.

Charlie and I would follow a buy-and-hold policy even if we ran a tax-exempt institution.

Warren Buffett

When Walter and Edwin were asked in 1989 by Outstanding Investors Digest, "How would you summarize your approach?" Edwin replied, "We try to buy stocks cheap." So much for Modern Portfolio Theory, technical analysis, macroeconomic thoughts and complex algorithms.

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