Warren Buffett Investing Quotations

When a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact.

Of the billionaires I have known, money just brings out the basic traits in them. If they were jerks before they had money, they are simply jerks with a billion dollars.

We enjoy the process far more than the proceeds.

An educational approach to money and investing struck me as a very good idea. People do form behavior habits very young on matters of money. I get calls every day from people who are in a financial hole.

Anything can happen anytime in markets. And no advisor, economist, or TV commentator-and definitely not Charlie nor I-can tell you when chaos will occur. Market forecasters will fill your ear but will never fill your wallet.

As far as you are concerned, the stock market does not exist. Ignore it.

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.

When Berkshire buys common stock, we approach the transaction as if we were buying into a private business.

We do not view the company itself as the ultimate owner of our business assets but instead view the company as a conduit through which our shareholders own assets.

Lethargy, bordering on sloth should remain the cornerstone of an investment style.

Does the business have a consistent operating history?

Remember that the stock market is manic-depressive.

The advice "you never go broke taking a profit" is foolish.

Calculate "owner earnings" to get a true reflection of value.

Does management resist the institutional imperative?

Is management candid with the shareholders?

Is management rational?

Wild swings in share prices have more to do with the "lemming- like" behaviour of institutional investors than with the aggregate returns of the company they own.

Sound investing can make you very wealthy if you're not in too big a hurry

[W]e think the very term 'value investing' is redundant. What is 'investing' if it is not the act of seeking value at least sufficient to justify the amount paid? Consciously paying more for a stock than its calculated value -- in the hope that it can soon be sold for a still-higher price -- should be labeled speculation (which is neither illegal, immoral nor -- in our view -- financially fattening).

Long ago, Ben Graham taught me that

When asked how he became so successful in investing, Buffett answered: 'we read hundreds and hundreds of annual reports every year.

Stop trying to predict...

Investing is not as tough as being a top-notch bridge player. All it takes is the ability to see things as they really are.

The fact that people will be full of greed, fear, or folly is predictable. The sequence is not predictable.

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.

We have long felt that the only value of stock forecasters is to make fortune-tellers look good.

Diversification is protection against ignorance. It makes little sense if you know what you are doing.

You know ... you keep doing the same things and you keep getting the same result over and over again.

An investor should act as though he had a lifetime decision card with just twenty punches on it.

Growth and value investing are joined at the hip.

Valuing a business is part art and part science.

In a commodity business, it's very hard to be smarter than your dumbest competitor.

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.

Read Ben Graham and Phil Fisher read annual reports, but don't do equations with Greek letters in them.

With enough insider information and a million dollars, you can go broke in a year.

Enjoy your work and work for whom you admire.

We like to buy businesses, but we don't like to sell them.

You do not adequately protect yourself by being half awake when other are sleeping.

A great investment opportunity occurs when a marvelous business encounters a one-time huge, but solvable problem.

It's not debt per say that overwhelms an individual corporation or country. Rather it is a continuous increase in debt in relation to income that causes trouble.

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 measure my life by the money I've made. Other people might, but certainly don't.

An investor needs to do very few things right as long as he or she avoids big mistakes.

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.

Cash never makes us happy, but it's better to have the money burning a hole in Berkshire's pocket than resting comfortably in someone else's.

Diversification is a protection against ignorance. It makes very little sense for those who know what they're doing.

Buy a cross section of American industry, and if a cross section of American industry doesn't work, certainly trying to pick the little beauties here and there isn't going to work either.

We really can say no in 10 seconds or so to 90%+ of all the things that come along simply because we have these filters.

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.

Inactivity strikes us as intelligent behavior.

The best education you can get is investing in yourself, and that doesn't mean college or university.

If you own a wonderful business...the best thing to do is keep it. All you're going to do is trade your wonderful business for a whole bunch of cash, which isn't as good as the business, and you got the problem of investing in other businesses, and you probably paid a tax in between. So my advice to anybody who owns a wonderful business is keep it.

Investing requires qualities of temperament way more than it requires qualities of intellect.

You could be somewhere where the mail was delayed three weeks and do just fine investing.

If you can eliminate the government as a 39.6% partner, then you will be much better off.

If you know how to value businesses, it's crazy to own 50 stocks or 40 stocks or 30 stocks, probably because there aren't that many wonderful businesses understandable to a single human being in all likelihood. To forego buying more of some super-wonderful business and instead put your money into #30 or #35 on your list of attractiveness just strikes Charlie and me as madness.

When they get their ego involved, people do things they shouldn't do.

We would do best in a market where everyone acted foolishly.

When the brothel burns down, even the pretty girls have to run out.

The three most important words in investing...Margin of Safety.

If you expect to continue to purchase stocks throughout your life, you should welcome price declines as a way to add stocks more cheaply to your portfolio.

Always associate yourself with people who are better than you.

Traditional wisdom is long on tradition and short on wisdom.

Well, one time some attractive woman sat next to Charlie and asked him what he owed his success to, and, unfortunately, she insisted on a one word answer. He had a speech prepared that would have gone on for several hours. But when forced to boil it down to one word, he said that was "rational". You know, he comes equipped for rationality, and he applies it in business. He doesn't always apply it elsewhere, but he applies it in business and that has made him a huge business success.

... it's important to have the right monetary policy. It's important for, to have the right fiscal policy. But it's nowhere near as important as just the normal regenerative capacity of American capitalism.

One of the ironies of the stock market is the emphasis on activity. Brokers, using terms such as 'marketability' and 'liquidity,' sing the praises of companies with high share turnover... but investors should understand that what is good for the croupier is not good for the customer. A hyperactive stock market is the pick pocket of enterprise.

The greatest Enemies of the Equity investor are Expenses and Emotions.

Our marketable equities tell us by their operating results - not by their daily, or even yearly, price quotations - whether our investments are successful. The market may ignore business success for a while, but eventually will confirm it.

Investing is simple, but not easy.

When investing, pessimism is your friend, euphoria the enemy.

The ideal business is one that earns very high returns on capital and that keeps using lots of capital at those high returns. That becomes a compounding machine.

Cash combined with courage in a time of crisis is priceless.

I get to do what I like to do every single day of the year.

You shouldn't own common stocks if a 50 per cent decrease in their value in a short period of time would cause you acute distress.

Turnarounds seldom turn.

The key to investing is not assessing how much an industry is going to affect society, or how much it will grow, but rather determining the competitive advantage of any given company and, above all, the durability of that advantage.

A hyperactive stock market is the pickpocket of enterprise.

Beware of geeks bearing formulas.

Does the business have favourable long term prospects?

In the end, alchemy, whether it is metallurgical or financial, fails. A base business can not be transformed into a golden business by tricks of accounting or capital structure. The man claiming to be a financial alchemist may become rich. But gullible investors rather than business achievements will usually be the source of his wealth.

All there is to investing is picking good stocks at good times and staying with them as long as they remain good companies.

It's us fun being a gorse when the tractor comes along, or the blacksmith when the car comes along.

The most important quality for an investor is temperament, not intellect.

Look for companies with high profit margins.

Never count on making a good sale. Have the purchase price be so attractive that even a mediocre sale gives good results.

Forecasts may tell you a great deal about the forecaster; they tell you nothing about the future.

Investing is forgoing consumption now in order to have the ability to consume more at a later date.

We will only do with your money what we would do with our own.

Investing is laying out money now to get more money back in the future.

By periodically investing in an index fund, the know-nothing investors can actually outperform most investment professionals.

It is more important to say "no" to an opportunity, than to say "yes".

Investing in yourself is the best thing you can do. If you've got talents, no one can take them from you.

Many stock options in the corporate world have worked in exactly that fashion: they have gained in value simply because management retained earnings, not because it did well with the capital in its hands.

I do not like debt and do not like to invest in companies that have too much debt, particularly long-term debt. With long-term debt, increases in interest rates can drastically affect company profits and make future cash flows less predictable.

First come the innovators, then come the imitators, then come the idiots.

Never invest in a business you can't understand

In investing, just as in baseball, to put runs on the scoreboard, one must watch the playing field, not the scoreboard.

Derivatives are financial weapons of mass destruction.