Warren Buffett Quotes

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.

The critical investment factor is determining the intrinsic value of a business and paying a fair or bargain price.

Investment students need only two well-taught courses - How to Value a Business and How to Think About Market Prices

Market value is irrelevant to intrinsic value. ... Unqualified judgment can at most claim to decide the market-value - a value that can be in inverse proportion to the intrinsic value.

I'd rather buy something that is relatively depressed than something that is relatively high.

A great business at a fair price is superior to a fair business at a great price.

I put heavy weight on certainty. It's not risky to buy securities at a fraction of what they're worth.

I used to think that good short-sellers could be trained like long-focused value investors because it should be the same skill set; you’re tearing into the numbers, you’re valuing the businesses, you’re assigning a consolidated value, and hopefully you’re seeing something the market doesn’t see.But now I’ve learned that there’s a big difference between a long-focused value investor and a good short-seller. That difference is psychological and I think it falls into the realm of behavioral finance.

Investors must keep in mind that there's a difference between a good company and a good stock. After all, you can buy a good car but pay too much for it.

To some extent, stocks are like Rembrandts. They sell based on what they've sold in the past. Bonds are much more rational. No-one thinks a bond's value will soar to the moon.

You must value the business in order to value the stock.

I rarely think the market is right. I believe non dividend stocks aren't much more than baseball cards. They are worth what you can convince someone to pay for it.

You don't get rewarded for taking risk; you get rewarded for buying cheap assets. And if the assets you bought got pushed up in price simply because they were risky, then you are not going to be rewarded for taking a risk; you are going to be punished for it.

When the opportunities come, we may not want to buy another nickel asset, but if something comes cheap enough, we're all about return on equity.

Everyone has the idea of owning good companies. The problem is that they have high prices in relations to assets and earnings, and that takes all of the fun out of the game.

Who cares if companies are overvalued or not?

We call ourselves 'opportunistic value investors.'

I try to buy shares of unpopular companies when they look like road kill and sell them when they've been polished up a bit.

You're looking for a mispriced gamble. That's what investing is. And you have to know enough to know whether the gamble is mispriced. That's value investing.

Fundamental analysis seeks to establish how underlying values are reflected in stock prices, whereas the theory of reflexivity shows how stock prices can influence underlying values

The purchase of a bargain issue presupposes that the market's current appraisal is wrong, or at least that the buyer's idea of value is more likely to be right than the market's. In this process the investor sets his judgement against that of the market. To some this may seem arrogant or foolhardy.

The investment game always involves considering both quality and price, and the trick is to get more quality than you pay for in price. It's just that simple.

Perhaps never before or since have so many people taken the measure of economic prospects and found them so favorable as in the two days following the Thursday [24th October 1929] disaster.

The idea that you try to time purchases based on what you think business is going to do in the next year or two, I think that's the greatest mistake that investors make because it's always uncertain. People say it's a time of uncertainty. It was uncertain on September 10th, 2001, people just didn't know it. It's uncertain every single day. So take uncertainty as part of being involved in investment at all. But uncertainty can be your friend. I mean, when people are scared, they pay less for things. We try to price. We don't try to time at all.