The smarter the journalists are, the better off society is. For to a degree, people read the press to inform themselves-and the better the teacher, the better the student body.
There are all kinds of businesses that Charlie and I don’t understand, but that doesn’t cause us to stay up at night. It just means we go on to the next one, and that’s what the individual investor should do.
There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult.
Time is the friend of the wonderful company, the enemy of the mediocre.
We don’t get paid for activity, just for being right. As to how long we’ll wait, we’ll wait indefinitely.
We enjoy the process far more than the proceeds.
We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful.
We’ve long felt that the only value of stock forecasters is to make fortune tellers look good. Even now, Charlie and I continue to believe that short-term market forecasts are poison and should be kept locked up in a safe place, away from children and also from grown-ups who behave in the market like children.
When a management team with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact.
Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.