Warren Buffett Quotes

If your investing approach requires that you become Nostradamus to succeed, then you are destined to fail.

It is important for investors to understand what they do and don't know. Learn to recognize that you cannot possibly know what is going to happen in the future, and any investment plan that is dependent on accurately forecasting where markets will be next year is doomed to failure.

Investing is about making probabilistic decisions with limited information about an unknowable future. The variables are well known, as are the possible outcomes.

The beauty of diversification is it's about as close as you can get to a free lunch in investing.

I have no complaints about losing money I put in high-risk investments. I did some of that when I had real money; my informed choice, my measured gamble.

If the investor doesn't have enough time and skill to investigate individual stocks or enough money to diversify a portfolio, the right thing to do is to invest in exchange-traded funds that give you exposure to asset classes. It does make sense for the individual investor to think in terms of holding individual asset classes.

In the investment business, you must expect to be wrong.

There's so much disagreement about investing, and it's because nobody really knows.

Investing is about predicting the future, and the future is inherently unpredictable. Therefore, the only way you can do better is to assess all the facts and truly know what you know and know what you don't know. That's your probability edge.

Investing is a probabilistic business. Every once in a while, it's sort of like you're throwing six-sided dice, and anything except a one or a two, you're doing well. Statistically speaking, you throw the dice enough times, you're going to throw a one or a two five times in a row, and you're going to look pretty foolish, right?

I think it is crucial to diversify one's portfolio.

I spend about half of my time wondering why I have so much in stocks and about half wondering why I have so little.

Well, the most important thing in investing is to know what you're investing in, and if you're confident in the outcome, it's important to stay true to your position.

Diversification is an established tenet of conservative investment.

In the long run, a portfolio of well chosen stocks and/or equity mutual funds will always outperform a portfolio of bonds or a money-market account. In the long run, a portfolio of poorly chosen stocks won't outperform the money left under the mattress.

You could lose hundreds or thousands one day on paper and gain it all back the next, and it has literally no effect on your immediate future, provided the money you have in the market is money you're investing for the long haul (meaning at least three to five years).

Always keep your portfolio and your risk at your own individual comfortable sleeping point.

I'm not a money manager, but I can tell you what the conventional wisdom is. The younger you are, the more risk you can take on.

Investors have to ask themselves two questions. How much can we grow our investments? And, can we afford our mistakes?

Mutual funds give people the sense that they're investing with the big boys and that they're really not at a disadvantage entering the stock market.

What I'm trying to say is that for the average investor, what I would encourage them to do is to understand that there's inflation and growth. It can go higher and lower and to have four different portfolios essentially that make up your entire portfolio that gets you balanced.

A financial crisis is a great time for professional investors and a horrible time for average ones.

I have a million dollars in the stock market, because if I lose a million dollars, I don't personally care.

My advice to the average investor in 1988 is to be patient and think long-term. It will take 18 months for confidence to get better and, in the meantime, this is absolutely no place for short-term money.

The last thing you want to do, unless it's a very unusual situation, is to invest money.