Buffett's uncommon urge to chronicle made him a unique character in American life, not only a great capitalist but the Great Explainer of American capitalism. He taught a generation how to think about business, and he showed that securities were not just tokens like the Monopoly flatiron, and that investing need not be a game of chance. It was also a logical, commonsensical enterprise, like the tangible businesses beneath. He stripped Wall Street of its mystery and rejoined it to Main Street -- a mythical or disappearing place, perhaps, but one that is comprehensible to the ordinary American.
Investing is not a natural science but rather a social science. So, it's never purely empirical; what you are trying to do is everything you possibly can to enhance your probabilities of being right more often than being wrong.
You know, people tend to like to buy companies that are doing well.
If the governments devalue the currency in order to betray all creditors, you politely call this procedure 'inflation'.
I believe in infrastructure, I believe in investing in your hard assets. Where I think government starts to fail is when it starts getting itself weighed down with the social programs. And I think the American public just feels like a lot of that money is tossed aside and wasted.
Is there a greater tragedy imaginable than that, in our endeavour consciously to shape our future in accordance with high ideals, we should in fact unwittingly produce the very opposite of what we have been striving for?
In the book of things people more often do wrong than right, investing must certainly top the list, followed closely by wallpapering and eating artichokes
The memory of the financial community is proverbially and distressingly short.
And finally, no matter how good the science gets, there are problems that inevitably depend on judgment, on art, on a feel for financial markets.
The multiple failings of our flawed financial sector are jeopardizing, not only the retirement security of our nation's savers but the economy in which our entire society participates.
Timing the market is a fools game, whereas time in the market is your greatest natural advantage.
You hear all this whining going on, 'Where are our great writers?' The thing I might feel doleful about is: 'Where are the readers?'
Many of the biggest and most far-reaching investments we make in our lives are investments that have little or nothing to do with money.
We define a bargain issue as one which, on the basis of facts established by analysis, appears to be worth considerably more that it is selling for.
I think the oversight is great, and I think that oversight ought to be devoted almost entirely to the question is this being done at market you know. In other words, you want to make sure that the government isn't investing foolishly. But you don't want to care about which congressional districts it goes to or whether banks get favored over.
Obvious prospects for physical growth in a business do not translate into obvious profits for investors.
I favour passive investing for most investors, because markets are amazingly successful devices for incorporating information into stock prices.
A Financial Research Corporation study determined that the expense ratio is the only reliable predictor of future mutual fund performance.
Always remember that market quotations are there for convenience, either to be taken advantage of or to be ignored.
There's no shame in losing money on a stock. Everybody does it. What is shameful is to hold on to a stock, or worse, to buy more of it when the fundamentals are deteriorating.