15[83]
“Rule No. 1: never lose money; rule No. 2: don’t forget rule No. 1”
Source: The Tao of Warren Buffett, by Mary Buffett and David Clark
“I am a better investor because I am a businessman, and a better businessman because I am no investor.”
Source: Forbes.com – Thoughts On The Business Life
“You can sell it to Berkshire, and we’ll put it in theMetropolitanMuseum; it’ll have a wing all by itself; it’ll be there forever. Or you can sell it to some porn shop operator, and he’ll take the painting and he’ll make the boobs a little bigger and he’ll stick it up in the window, and some other guy will come along in a raincoat, and he’ll buy it.” – On what makes people sell to him
Source: Bloomberg
“It’s far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price.”
Source: Letter to shareholders, 1989
“You don’t need to be a rocket scientist. Investing is not a game where the guy with the 160 IQ beats the guy with 130 IQ.”
Source: Warren Buffet Speaks, By Janet Lowe, via msnbc.msn
“Investing is not a game where the guy with the 160 IQ beats the guy with the 130 IQ. Once you have ordinary intelligence, what you need is the temperament to control the urges that get other people into trouble in investing.” —Warren Buffett
“Long ago, Sir Isaac Newton gave us three laws of motion, which were the work of genius. But Sir Isaac’s talents didn’t extend to investing: He lost a bundle in the South Sea Bubble, explaining later, “I can calculate the movement of the stars, but not the madness of men.” If he had not been traumatized by this loss, Sir Isaac might well have gone on to discover the Fourth Law of Motion: For investors as a whole, returns decrease as motion increases.”
Source: Letters to shareholders, 2005
“Time is the friend of the wonderful business, the enemy of the mediocre.”
Source: Letters to shareholders 1989
“After all, you only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out.”
Source: Letter to shareholders, 2001
“Investors should remember that excitement and expenses are their enemies. And if they insist on trying to time their participation in equities, they should try to be fearful when others are greedy and greedy only when others are fearful.”
Source: Letter to shareholders, 2004
“When we own portions of outstanding businesses with outstanding managements, our favorite holding period is forever.”
Source: Letter to shareholders, 1988
“The stock market is a no-called-strike game. You don’t have to swing at everything–you can wait for your pitch. The problem when you’re a money manager is that your fans keep yelling, ‘Swing, you bum!'”
Source: The Tao of Warren Buffett, by Mary Buffett and David Clark, via Engineeringnews.com
“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.”
Source: Letter to shareholders, 2008
” Our approach is very much profiting from lack of change rather than from change. With Wrigley chewing gum, it’s the lack of change that appeals to me. I don’t think it is going to be hurt by the Internet. That’s the kind of business I like.”
Source: Businessweek, 1999
“The best thing that happens to us is when a great company gets into temporary trouble…We want to buy them when they’re on the operating table.”
Source: Businessweek, 1999
” I have pledged – to you, the rating agencies and myself – to always runBerkshirewith 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.”
Source: Letter to shareholders, 2008
Top 25 Buffett Quotes[84]
1. “Rule No.1: Never lose money. Rule No.2: Never forget rule No.1”
2. “In a bull market, one must avoid the error of the preening duck that quacks boastfully after a torrential rainstorm, thinking that its paddling skills have caused it to rise in the world. A right-thinking duck would instead compare its position after the downpour to that of the other ducks on the pond.”
3. “The fact that people will be full of greed, fear or folly is predictable. The sequence is not predictable.”
4. “Be fearful when others are greedy. Be greedy when others are fearful.”
5. “It’s far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price.”
6. “When a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is usually the reputation of the business that remains intact.”
7. “You only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out.”
8. “Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing.”
9. “If I was running $1 million today, or $10 million for that matter, I’d be fully invested. Anyone who says that size does not hurt investment performance is selling. The highest rates of return I’ve ever achieved were in the 1950s. I killed the Dow. You ought to see the numbers. But I was investing peanuts then. It’s a huge structural advantage not to have a lot of money. I think I could make you 50% a year on $1 million. No, I know I could. I guarantee that.”
10. “Whether we’re talking about socks or stocks, I like buying quality merchandise when it is marked down.”
11. “I try to buy stock in businesses that are so wonderful that an idiot can run them. Because sooner or later, one will.”
12. “Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.”
13. “I don’t look to jump over 7-foot bars: I look around for 1-foot bars that I can step over.”
14. “If a business does well, the stock eventually follows.”
15. “Look at market fluctuations as your friend rather than your enemy; profit from folly rather than participate in it.”
16. “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.”
17. “The line separating investment and speculation, which is never bright and clear, becomes blurred still further when most market participants have recently enjoyed triumphs. Nothing sedates rationality like large doses of effortless money. After a heady experience of that kind, normally sensible people drift into behavior akin to that of Cinderella at the ball. They know that overstaying the festivities — that is, continuing to speculate in companies that have gigantic valuations relative to the cash they are likely to generate in the future — will eventually bring on pumpkins and mice. But they nevertheless hate to miss a single minute of what is one helluva party. Therefore, the giddy participants all plan to leave just seconds before midnight. There’s a problem, though: They are dancing in a room in which the clocks have no hands.”
18. “Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.”
19. “Never count on making a good sale. Have the purchase price be so attractive that even a mediocre sale gives good results.”
20. “Investors making purchases in an overheated market need to recognize that it may often take an extended period for the value of even an outstanding company to catch up with the price they paid.”
21. “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.”
22. “We don’t get paid for activity, just for being right. As to how long we’ll wait, we’ll wait indefinitely.”
23. “In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield.”
24. “The investor of today does not profit from yesterday’s growth.”
25. “Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.”
On selecting investment managers: “It’s easy to identify many investment managers with great recent records. But past results, though important, do not suffice when prospective performance is being judged. How the record has been achieved is crucial…” – Warren Buffett, 2010 shareholder letter
Warren Buffett (source unknown):
On Investing
- “Rule No.1: Never lose money. Rule No.2: Never forget rule No.1.”
- “It’s far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price.”
- “Only buy something that you’d be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for 10 years.”
- “We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful.”
- “Why not invest your assets in the companies you really like? As Mae West
