Warren Buffett is living proof that you don’t have to spend your energy timing the stock market to be a successful investor. As Buffett notes, “we haven’t the faintest idea what the stock market is going to do when it opens on Monday.” For Buffett, more important than trying to time the market, is recognizing when a particular stock is undervalued.
“I totally missed, you know, in March of 2020,” Warren Buffett said at the 2022 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting. “We have not been good at timing. We’ve been reasonably good at figuring out when we were getting enough for our money. And we had no idea when we bought anything (well, we always hoped it would go down for a while so we could buy more) and we hoped even after we were done buying and ran out of money that if it was cheap the company would keep buying, in effect, taking our interest up. I mean, that’s stuff you can learn it in fourth grade. But it’s not what’s taught in school.”
Hear Buffett’s full explanation
See the complete Lessons From Warren Buffett series
© 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.