Favorite Quotes
"In the short run, the market is a voting machine but in the long run it is a weighing machine."
- Benjamin Graham
"There are 60,000 economists in the U.S., many of them employed full-time trying to forecast recessions and interest rates, and if they could do it successfully twice in a row, they'd all be millionaires by now...as far as I know, most of them are still gainfully employed, which ought to tell us something."
- Peter Lynch, One Up On Wall Street
"Of the 2,692 diversified stock mutual funds tracked by Lipper Analytical Services, only 134 have beaten the S&P 500 this year."
- USA Today; June 18, 1998
"I will tell you how to become rich. Close the doors. Be fearful when others are greedy. Be greedy when others are fearful."
- Warren Buffett lecturing to a group of students at Columbia U. He was 21 years old.
"The stock market is filled with individuals who know the price of everything, but the value of nothing."
- Philip Fisher, Common Stocks Uncommon Profits
"The most common cause of low prices is pessimism-some times pervasive, some times specific to a company or industry. We want to do business in such an environment, not because we like pessimism but because we like the prices it produces. It's optimism that is the enemy of the rational buyer."
- Warren Buffett, 1990 Chairman's Letter to Shareholders
"The whole concept of dividing it up into 'value' and 'growth' strikes me as twaddle. It's convenient for a bunch of pension fund consultants to get fees prattling about and a way for one advisor to distinguish himself from another. But, to me, all intelligent investing is value investing."
- Charlie Munger
"First, many in Wall Street - a community in which quality control is not prized - will sell investors anything they will buy."
- Warren Buffett, 2000 Letter to Shareholders
"If you expect to be a net saver during the next 5 years, should you hope for a higher or lower stock market during that period?
"Many investors get this one wrong. Even though they are going to be net buyers of stocks for many years to come, they are elated when stock prices rise and depressed when they fall.
"This reaction makes no sense. Only those who will be sellers of equities in the near future should be happy at seeing stocks rise. Prospective purchasers should much prefer sinking prices."
- Warren Buffett, 1997 Chairman's Letter to Shareholders
"We will reject interesting opportunities rather than over-leverage our balance sheet."
- Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway Owners Manual
"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!'"
- Warren Buffett
1999 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting
"If you understood a business perfectly and the future of the business, you would need very little in the way of a margin of safety. So, the more vulnerable the business is, assuming you still want to invest in it, the larger margin of safety you'd need. If you're driving a truck across a bridge that says it holds 10,000 pounds and you've got a 9,800 pound vehicle, if the bridge is 6 inches above the crevice it covers, you may feel okay, but if it's over the Grand Canyon, you may feel you want a little larger margin of safety..."
- Warren Buffett, 1997 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting
"This time Congress should listen to the slim accountants. The logic behind their thinking is simple:
- If options aren't a form of compensation, what are they?
- If compensation isn't an expense, what is it?
- And if expenses shouldn't go into the calculation of earnings, where in the world should they go?"
"Never count on making a good sale. Have the purchase price be so attractive that even a mediocre sale gives good results."
- Warren Buffett, 1974 Letter to Shareholders
"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."
- Warren Buffett, Oct. 2003 talking with Wharton MBA students
"The important thing is to keep playing, to play against weak opponents and to play for big stakes."
- Warren Buffett, Nov. 2002 talking with students at Gaston Hall
Maintaining strict asset allocation percentages is pure nonsense. Investors should judge stocks, bonds and other investments on their merits and their price, changing their allocations as circumstances change.
-Warren Buffett, 2004 Annual Meeting
A checklist is no substitute for thinking.
-Warren Buffett, 2004 Annual Meeting
Peter Lynch Cocktail Party Theory
Market Fluctuations by Warren Buffett