Warren Buffett Quotes

Investors should remember that excitement and expenses are their enemies.

Investors should remember that excitement and expenses are their enemies. And if they insist on trying to time their participation in equities, they should try to be fearful when others are greedy and greedy only when others are fearful.

The investor who permits himself to be stampeded or unduly worried by unjustified market declines in his holdings is perversely transforming his basic advantage into a basic disadvantage.

People who invest make money for themselves; people who speculate make money for their brokers. And that, in turn, is why Wall Street perennially downplays the durable virtues of investing and hypes the gaudy appeal of speculation.

Successful investing is anticipating the anticipations of others.

The most important thing is to stay the course - not to get shaken out of the market during a difficult time.

There's no statistical evidence that human beings have an ability to move in and out of the markets effectively. It's next to impossible.

I'm a pretty disciplined investor and pretty disciplined buyer. I do my due diligence. I do my homework. I don't waste money.

The three traits speculators must learn to manage within themselves are confidence, fear, and aggressiveness.

Success in investing doesn't correlate with I.Q. once you're above the level of 25. Once you have ordinary intelligence, what you need is the temperament to control the urges that get other people into trouble in investing.

The best restraint is old-fashioned market discipline, in which financial traders know that they, personally, will lose a ton of money if they take risky bets that don't pan out.

You cannot have an asset that goes up in price 1% every month or 1% every six months or every day without people starting to start thinking it'll do the same tomorrow, so that's why these bubbles form.

Market risk is like taking a plunge into a cool pool ... a lot of people are finding out right now what their risk tolerance is.

When investing, pessimism is your friend, euphoria the enemy.

A price decline is of no real importance to the bona fide investor unless it is either very substantial say, more than a third from cost or unless it reflects a known deterioration of consequence in the company's position. In a well-defined bear market many sound common stocks sell temporarily at extraordinary low prices. It is possible that the investor may then have a paper loss of fully 50 per cent on some of his holdings, without any convincing indication that the underlying values have been permanently affected.

Confusing speculation with investment is always a mistake.

Men who can both be right and sit tight are uncommon. I found it one of the hardest things to learn. But it is only after a stock operator has firmly grasped this that he can make big money.

Thousands of people have tried, and the evidence is clear: The more you trade, the less you keep.

One of the most helpful things that any body can learn is to give up trying to catch the last eighth - or the first. These two are the most expensive eighths in the world.

I'd say it's that most people think that very wealthy people take huge risks and that's why they have huge rewards. But the very best on earth are completely obsessed with not losing money. That sounds overly simplistic, but they know that if you lost 50 percent, it takes 100 percent to get even. Most people don't make that math in their head, so it takes years and years. They are obsessed with not losing money.

It's a funny thing, by the way, how people who love free markets are also quite sure that they know that investors are being irrational.

There seems to be an unwritten rule on Wall Street: If you don't understand it, then put your life savings into it. Shun the enterprise around the corner, which can at least be observed, and seek out the one that manufactures an incomprehensible product.

To have a true investment, there must be a true margin of safety. And a true margin of safety is one that can be demonstrated by figures, by persuasive reasoning, and by reference to a body of actual experience.

Bull markets go to people's heads. If you're a duck on a pond, and it's rising due to a downpour, you start going up in the world. But you think it's you, not the pond.

It's quite clear that stocks are cheaper than bonds. I can't imagine anybody having bonds in their portfolio when they can own equities, a diversified group of equities. But people do because they, the lack of confidence. But that's what makes for the attractive prices. If they had their confidence back, they wouldn't be selling at these prices. And believe me, it will come back over time.