Tag: Warren Buffett

Disciplined investors are often trying to find the key investing principals that they can apply that will tell them when to make an investment. However, Warren Buffett points out that it is not that simple.

“People always want a formula. They go to The Intelligent Investor and they think, you know, somewhere they’re going to give me a little formula and then I can plug this in and I know I’ll make lots of money. And it really doesn’t work that way,” Warren Buffett said at the 2002 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting. “What you’re trying to do is look at all the cash a business will produce between now and judgment day, and discount it back at a rate that’s appropriate, and then buy it a lot cheaper than that…So, I wouldn’t want to have a single yardstick, or a, you know, relative P/E that I went by.”

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.

Beta, a measure of a stock’s historical volatility, is of no relevance to Warren Buffett when making an investment decision.

“We don’t pay any attention to beta or any of that sort of thing. It just doesn’t mean anything to us,” Warren Buffett said at the 1998 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting. “We’re only interested in price and value. And that’s what we’re focusing on all the time, and any kind of market movements or anything don’t mean anything.”

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.

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.”

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.

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.”

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.

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.”

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.

“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.”

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.

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.”

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.

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?”

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.