Category: Lessons From Warren Buffett

Having an invincible fortress of a business run by great management is the ideal situation for an investor, but forced to choose between the two, Warren Buffett would take the moat over the management. “If you have a big enough moat, you don’t need as much management,” Buffett notes.

“It gets back to Peter Lynch’s remark that he likes to buy a business that’s so good that an idiot can run it, because sooner or later one will,” Buffett said at the 1999 Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting. “He was saying that what he really likes is a business with a terrific moat where nothing can happen to the moat, and there aren’t very many businesses like that.”

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© 2022 David Mazor

Disclosure: David Mazor is a freelance writer focusing on Berkshire Hathaway. The author is long in Berkshire Hathaway, and this article is not a recommendation on whether to buy or sell the stock. The information contained in this article should not be construed as personalized or individualized investment advice. Past performance is no guarantee of future results.

It would seem logical that an investor wants to buy low and sell high, and that ideally that sale should be at or near the highest share price that a stock reaches. However, Warren Buffett sees it differently, and he has no fear that others make money off a stock that he’s sold. In fact, he thinks it is an indicator that as an investor you are on the right track when it comes to looking for superior businesses.

“I would worry, frankly, if I sold a bunch of things right at the top, because that would indicate that, in effect, I was practicing the bigger fool-type approach to investing, and I don’t think that can be practiced successfully over time,” Warren Buffett said at the 1998 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting. “I think the most successful investors, if they sell at all, will be selling things that end up going a lot higher, because it means that they’ve been buying into good businesses as they’ve gone along.”

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© 2022 David Mazor

Disclosure: David Mazor is a freelance writer focusing on Berkshire Hathaway. The author is long in Berkshire Hathaway, and this article is not a recommendation on whether to buy or sell the stock. The information contained in this article should not be construed as personalized or individualized investment advice. Past performance is no guarantee of future results.

It is easy for investors to get so wrapped up in a hot sector or company that they can lose sight of the fact that it in the end it is all about making money, and as Warren Buffett points out, a dollar from the hottest high tech company is no better than a dollar from a completely out of fashion industry.

“Whether the money comes from a bank, whether it comes from an internet company, or whether it comes from a brick company, the money all spends the same,” Warren Buffett said at the 2002 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting. “Now the question is, what are the economic characteristics of the internet company or the bank or the brick company that tell you how much cash they’re going to generate over long periods in the future.”

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© 2022 David Mazor

Disclosure: David Mazor is a freelance writer focusing on Berkshire Hathaway. The author is long in Berkshire Hathaway, and this article is not a recommendation on whether to buy or sell the stock. The information contained in this article should not be construed as personalized or individualized investment advice. Past performance is no guarantee of future results.

“Where Are Markets Headed? Six Pros Take Their Best Guess” was the headline in The Wall Street Journal. Clearly, much is written, and even more is probably spoken on financial shows, about where the market is headed. Is it at a peak? Is it at the bottom? Will it be higher or lower a week, month or year from now? Warren Buffett thinks that such prognostications are ultimately useless when it comes to actually making money.

“I know of no one that has been successful at, and really made a lot of money, predicting the actions of the market itself,” Buffett said at the 1999 Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting. “I know a lot of people who have done well picking businesses and buying them at sensible prices.”

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© 2022 David Mazor

Disclosure: David Mazor is a freelance writer focusing on Berkshire Hathaway. The author is long in Berkshire Hathaway, and this article is not a recommendation on whether to buy or sell the stock. The information contained in this article should not be construed as personalized or individualized investment advice. Past performance is no guarantee of future results.

If in reading a company’s financial reports it doesn’t make any sense to you, then avoid the company all together, Warren Buffett advises.

“I would say that when the accounting confuses you, I would just tend to forget about it as a company,” Warren Buffett said at the 1995 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting. “We have never had any great investment results from companies whose accounting we regarded as suspect. I can’t think of a one.”

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© 2022 David Mazor

Disclosure: David Mazor is a freelance writer focusing on Berkshire Hathaway. The author is long in Berkshire Hathaway, and this article is not a recommendation on whether to buy or sell the stock. The information contained in this article should not be construed as personalized or individualized investment advice. Past performance is no guarantee of future results.

Exactly what is investing and what differentiates it from gambling? Warren Buffett gives a clear, concise answer.

“Investment is the process of putting out money today to get more money back at some point in the future,” Buffett said at the 1999 Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting. “And the question is, how far in the future, how much money, and what is the appropriate discount rate to take it back to the present day and determine how much you pay?”

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© 2022 David Mazor

Disclosure: David Mazor is a freelance writer focusing on Berkshire Hathaway. The author is long in Berkshire Hathaway, and this article is not a recommendation on whether to buy or sell the stock. The information contained in this article should not be construed as personalized or individualized investment advice. Past performance is no guarantee of future results.

There are so many complicated investing schemes, but for Warren Buffett it all comes down to capital allocation.

“If you understand business, you understand investments,” Warren Buffett said at the 1998 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting. “Investments are simply business decisions in terms of capital allocation.”

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© 2022 David Mazor

Disclosure: David Mazor is a freelance writer focusing on Berkshire Hathaway. The author is long in Berkshire Hathaway, and this article is not a recommendation on whether to buy or sell the stock. The information contained in this article should not be construed as personalized or individualized investment advice. Past performance is no guarantee of future results.

Every investor has a circle of competency that encompasses the companies and types of investments that they understand. What do you do when you can’t find anything that fits in that circle? In Warren Buffett’s case, he prefers to wait rather than hoping he can enlarge the circle.

“If we have trouble finding things within our circle, we will not enlarge the circle,” Warren Buffett said at the 1995 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting. “You know, we’ll wait. That’s our approach.”

Warren Buffett is quick to point out that just because something in not in your circle of competency, it doesn’t mean it isn’t in somebody else’s. What Buffett understands when it comes to technology companies and what Bill Gates understands are vastly different. However, Buffett wants to understand it himself, not just take a recommendation from someone more expert than him.

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© 2022 David Mazor

Disclosure: David Mazor is a freelance writer focusing on Berkshire Hathaway. The author is long in Berkshire Hathaway, and this article is not a recommendation on whether to buy or sell the stock. The information contained in this article should not be construed as personalized or individualized investment advice. Past performance is no guarantee of future results.

Corporations that rely on the franchise model can’t just focus on squeezing the maximum amount of revenue out of their franchises if they want to truly be successful. According to Warren Buffett, who in 1998 purchased International Dairy Queen, a quick service restaurant chain that relies on the franchise model, you have to focus on building a great business that franchisees can be successful owning, and even eventually selling at a profit down the road.

Investors looking to buy shares in companies that rely heavily on the franchise model, would be wise to look beyond corporate financial reports, and personally visit franchisees to learn whether they feel they own a business that they can be successful with over the long term.

“You have to have a good business for the franchisee to, over time, have a good business for the parent company,” Warren Buffett said at the 1998 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting. “A successful franchisee can sell his operation for significantly more than he has invested in tangible assets. And we want it that way, obviously, because that means he’s got a successful business, and it means that, over time, we will have a successful business. You want the franchise operator to make money and you want him to create a capital asset that’s worth more than he’s put in it. That’s the goal.”

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© 2022 David Mazor

Disclosure: David Mazor is a freelance writer focusing on Berkshire Hathaway. The author is long in Berkshire Hathaway, and this article is not a recommendation on whether to buy or sell the stock. The information contained in this article should not be construed as personalized or individualized investment advice. Past performance is no guarantee of future results.