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We don't get paid for activity, just for being right. As to how long we'll wait, we'll wait indefinitely.
Warren Buffett
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I make no attempt to forecast the general market — my efforts are devoted to finding undervalued securities. However, I do believe that widespread public belief in the Inevitability of profits from investments in stocks will lead to eventual trouble. Should this occur, prices, but not intrinsic values in my opinion, of even undervalued securities can be expected to be substantially affected.
Warren Buffett
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Our stay-put behavior reflects our view that the stock market serves as a relocation center at which money is moved from the active to the patient.
Warren Buffett
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The worst sort of business is one that grows rapidly, requires significant capital to engender the growth, and then earns little or no money. Think airlines. Here a durable competitive advantage has proven elusive ever since the days of the Wright Brothers. Indeed, if a farsighted capitalist had been present at Kitty Hawk, he would have done his successors a huge favor by shooting Orville down.
Warren Buffett
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In fact, when we own portions of outstanding businesses with outstanding managements, our favorite holding period is forever.
Warren Buffett
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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.
Warren Buffett
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We intend to continue our practice of working only with people whom we like and admire. This policy not only maximizes our chances for good results, it also ensures us an extraordinarily good time.
Warren Buffett
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It's only when the tide goes out that you learn who's been swimming naked.
Warren Buffett
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We've long felt that the only value of stock forecasters is to make fortune tellers look good. Even now, Charlie and I continue to believe that short-term market forecasts are poison and should be kept locked up in a safe place, away from children and also from grown-ups who behave in the market like children.
Warren Buffett
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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.
Warren Buffett
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I insist on a lot of time being spent, almost every day, to just sit and think. That is very uncommon in American business. I read and think. So I do more reading and thinking, and make less impulse decisions than most people in business. I do it because I like this kind of life.
Warren Buffett
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The strategy we've adopted precludes our following standard diversification dogma. Many pundits would therefore say the strategy must be riskier than that employed by more conventional investors. We disagree. We believe that a policy of portfolio concentration may well decrease risk if it raises, as it should, both the intensity with which an investor thinks about a business and the comfort-level he must feel with its economic characteristics before buying into it. In stating this opinion, we define risk, using dictionary terms, as "the possibility of loss or injury."
Warren Buffett
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Our performance, relatively, is likely to be better in a bear market than in a bull market … in a year when the general market had a substantial advance, I would be well satisfied to match the advance of the averages.
Warren Buffett
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Our future rates of gain will fall far short of those achieved in the past. Berkshire's capital base is now simply too large to allow us to earn truly outsized returns. If you believe otherwise, you should consider a career in sales but avoid one in mathematics (bearing in mind that there are really only three kinds of people in the world: those who can count and those who can't).
Warren Buffett
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For example: (1) As if governed by Newton's First Law of Motion, an institution will resist any change in its current direction; (2) Just as work expands to fill available time, corporate projects or acquisitions will materialize to soak up available funds; (3) Any business craving of the leader, however foolish, will be quickly supported by detailed rate-of-return and strategic studies prepared by his troops; and (4) The behavior of peer companies, whether they are expanding, acquiring, setting executive compensation or whatever, will be mindlessly imitated.
Warren Buffett
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It's simply to say that managers and investors alike must understand that accounting numbers is the beginning, not the end, of business valuation.
Warren Buffett
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A great investment opportunity occurs when a marvelous business encounters a one-time huge, but solvable problem.
Warren Buffett
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A very rich person should leave his kids enough to do anything but not enough to do nothing.
Warren Buffett
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Capitalism is all about somebody coming and trying to take the castle. Now what you need is.... you need a castle that has some durable competitive advantage — some castle that has a moat around it.
Warren Buffett
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Businesses always have opportunities to improve service, product lines, manufacturing techniques, and the like, and obviously these opportunities should be seized. But a business that constantly encounters major change also encounters many chances for major error
Warren Buffett
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In a difficult business, no sooner is one problem solved than another surfaces - never is there just one cockroach in the kitchen.
Warren Buffett
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Managers thinking about accounting issues should never forget one of Abraham Lincoln's favorite riddles: How many legs does a dog have, if you call a tail a leg? The answer: Four, because calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg.
Warren Buffett
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I learned to go into business only with people whom I like, trust, and admire.
Warren Buffett
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It's a good idea to review past mistakes before committing new ones.
Warren Buffett
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In the end we must have people to match our principles, not the reverse.
Warren Buffett
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Quote of the day
Life is not having been told that the man has just waxed the floor.
Ogden Nash
Warren Buffett
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Born:
August 30, 1930
(age 93)
Bio:
Warren Edward Buffett is an American business magnate, investor and philanthropist. He is the most successful investor in the world.
Known for:
Thoughts of Chairman Buffett (1998)
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