I certainly have no desire to sell a good controlled business run by people I like and admire, merely to obtain a fancy price. However, specific conditions may cause the sale of one operating unit at some point.
Wall Street makes its money on activity. You make your money on inactivity.
I know what I want to do, and it makes sense to get going.
If the reason for doing something is that everyone else is doing it, it’s not a good enough reason.
Market prices for stocks fluctuate at great amplitudes around intrinsic value but, over the long term, intrinsic value is virtually always reflected at some point in market price.
Exercise humility and restraint.
Anyone who believes a growth rate in excess of 15% per annum over the long term is attainable should pursue a career in sales, but avoid one in mathematics.
What you really want to do in investments is figure out what’s important and knowable. If it’s unimportant or unknowable you forget about it.
You will be right, over the course of many transactions, if your hypotheses are correct, your facts are correct, and your reasoning is correct. True conservatism is only possible through knowledge and reason.
We try to buy businesses with good-to-superb underlying economics run by honest and able people and buy them at sensible prices. That’s all I’m trying to do.
I have always cautioned partners that I considered three years a minimum in determining whether we were “performing”.
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...
Don’t pass up something that’s attractive today because you think you will find something way more attractive tomorrow.
A fool and his money are soon invited everywhere.
The most important thing in terms of your circle of competence is not how large the area of it is, but how well you’ve defined the perimeter.
Of our 49 billion, we haven’t moved any to Bitcoin.
In economics, you always want to ask ‘And then what?’
If you aren’t willing to own a stock for ten years, don’t even think about owning it for ten minutes. Put together a portfolio of companies whose aggregate earnings march upward over the years, and so also will the portfolio’s market value.
You are lucky in life if you have the right heroes. I advise all of you, to the extent you can, to pick out a few heroes.
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 labelled speculation.