Warren Buffett
Recent Warren Buffett Quotations (Quotes)
“Many corporate managers, in fact, exhibit a bit of schizophrenia regarding equities. They consider their own stocks to be screamingly attractive. But, concomitantly, they stamp approval on pension policies rejecting purchases of common stocks in general. And the boss, while wearing his acquisition hat, will eagerly bid 150% to 200% of book value for businesses typical of corporate America but, wearing his pension hat, will scorn investment in similar companies at book value. Can his own talents be so unique that he is justified both in paying 200 cents on the dollar for a business if he can get his hands on it, and in rejecting it as an unwise pension investment at 100 cents on the dollar if it must be left to be run by his companions at the Business Roundtable?”
“The future is never clear; you pay a very high price in the stock market for a cheery consensus. Uncertainty actually is the friend of the buyer of long-term values.”
In Forbes
“I’ve no idea what the rate of return would be. But, knowing myself how hard it would be to do the calculations right, I’m suspicious of anybody’s numbers.” (When asked about the rate of return on Berkshire Hathaway)
“We do try to buy our businesses like we buy our stocks and buy our stocks like we buy our businesses.”
“Being a businessman makes me a better investor and being an investor makes me a better businessman. Most businessmen limit themselves to their own field, and most investors don’t really think about businesses. And many businessmen are semi-oblivious to the yardsticks other people use outside that field. I’m always comparing everything to everything else. The question I want to answer is. ‘Where do we get the most for our money in something we can understand?’”
In The Wall Street Journal
“I can’t predict the short-term movements of the stock market. I haven’t the faintest idea as to whether stocks will be higher or lower a month — or a year — from now.”
“…if you wait for the robins, spring will be over.”
“In short, bad news is an investor’s best friend. It lets you buy a slice of America’s future at a marked-down price.”
“I’ll follow the lead of a restaurant that opened in an empty bank building and then advertised: “Put your mouth where your money was.””
In The New York Times
“We had an economic Pearl Harbor hit. For a couple of weeks we’ve been arguing about who’s at fault, fooling around while things have gotten a lot worse.” (During an appearance at FORTUNE’s Most Powerful Women Summit)
“There’s an enormous advantage to being to act fast at a time like this. People know they can call me and they can get an answer in 10 seconds….And we try to make them pay for the fact that it’s an advantage to them.”
“Now you have someone with 20% skin in the game. Believe me, I won’t be overpaying if I’m buying with that kind of leverage. And you have someone to manage the assets to the extent they need to be managed.”
“The fellow on the other end, usually the CEO, says ‘The market looks at us as a toad. Berkshire Hathaway is looked at as a princess. And if you would just kiss us, we would turn into this handsome prince.’ And I say, ‘No, we would turn into a toad.’”
“I don’t worry too much about pointing fingers at the past. I operate on the theory that every saint has a past, every sinner has a future.”
In Fortune
“I don’t try to time things, but I do try to price things. And I’ve got a formula that says bet on brains, and bet of them when it’s the right type of deal.”
“Unfortunately, the economy is a little like a bathtub. You can’t have cold water in the front and hot water in the back.”
“And I think that top management did not have their mind around what was involved with those contracts. And you can do a lot of damage on Wall Street with a pen and a piece of paper.”
“You can be pretty fanciful in marking positions in Wall Street, particularly when things aren’t trading.”
“Well, the stock market in the short — my old boss Ben Graham said that in the short-run the stock market is a voting machine, in the long-run it’s a weighing machine. As a voting machine, it responds to people’s emotions. There’s no literacy test for voting. You vote according to how much money you have, not according to how smart you (are.) So the stock market does some very silly things in the short-run. Over the long-run, it behaves quite rationally.”
“But they shouldn’t own it on leverage. That’s what people have learned in this period, that you’ve got to be able to play out your hand and it’s a big mistake to let somebody else be in a position where they can sell you out.”
“It’s nice to have a lot of money, but you don’t want to keep it around forever. I prefer buying things. Otherwise it’s a little like saving up sex for your old age. At some point, you’ve got to use it.”
“I look for opportunities every day, and then if I find opportunities, I see if I’ve got enough cash around to take care of them.”
“But the derivative genie got out of the bottle, and it’s a huge genie, and it will never get back into the bottle.”
“Well, I’m sure we didn’t want to go to war on December 7, 1941, maybe, in the dead of night, or whenever we did it, in the middle of the afternoon actually. But there are time when events force timetables on you, and force action, and you have to be — You know, it’s just like in my business. I might like to think over buying something for a month, I’m not that type anyway. But in the end, if somebody offers me something that makes sense, I better decide whether to act or not. And if it makes sense to me, I usually don’t attach unnecessary conditions, you know. It would be nice to have the luxury of thinking about this for three months. But I will tell you, if you think about this for three months, you’re going to have a situation where — If you think about it for three weeks, you’re going to be facing a situation that’s far different, and far more difficult, than if you do something now.”
In a CNBC Squawk Box Interview
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Warren Buffett