Investing
All intelligent investing is value investing; then acquire more than you are paying for. Investing is where you find a few great companies and then sit on your ass.
Source: BRK Annual Meeting 2000
I said, “We know the edge of our competency better than most.” That’s a very worthwhile thing. It’s not a competency if you don’t know the edge of it.
Source: BRK Annual Meeting 2006 Tilson Notes
Some of the worst business decisions I’ve seen came with detailed analysis. The higher math was false precision. They do that in business schools, because they’ve got to do something.
Source: BRK Annual Meeting 2009 Bruni Notes
Finance people want equations like Black-Scholes so they don’t have to think hard.
Source: Gongol notes from the 2012 Berkshire Hathaway shareholders’ meeting
Gold is a great thing to sew into your garments if you’re a Jewish family in Vienna in 1939,but I think civilized people don’t buy gold, they invest in productive businesses.
Source: CNBC Interview, 4 May 2012
When you’re trying to determine intrinsic value and margin of safety, there’s no one easy method that can simply be mechanically applied by a computer that will make someone who pushes the buttons rich. You have to apply a lot of models. I don’t think you can become a great investor rapidly, no more than you can become a bone-tumor pathologist quickly.
Source: BRK Annual Meeting 2007 Tilson Notes
It’s [high frequency trading is] legalized front-running. I think it is basically evil and I don’t think it should have ever been allowed to reach the size that it did. Why should all of us pay a little group of people to engage in legalized front-running of our orders?
Source: CNBC interview, May 3, 2013
Business
Some of the worst business decisions I’ve seen came with detailed analysis. The higher math was false precision. They do that in business schools, because they’ve got to do something.
Source: BRK Annual Meeting 2009 Bruni Notes
We prefer businesses that drown in cash. An example of a different business is construction equipment. You work hard all year and there is your profit sitting in the yard. We avoid businesses like that. We prefer those that can write us a check at the end of the year.
Source: BRK Annual Meeting 2008 Boodell Notes
It’s the nature of things that most small businesses will never be big businesses. It is the nature of things that most big businesses fall into mediocrity or worse. Most players have to die.
Source: BRK Annual Meeting 2008 Boodell Notes
The difference between a good business and a bad business it is that good businesses throw up one easy decision after another. The bad businesses throw up painful decisions time after time.
Source: Damn Right: Behind the Scenes with Berkshire Hathaway Billionaire Charlie Munger, p59
The Internet is not just slightly terrible, but really terrible for most retailers.
Source: Gongol notes from the 2012 Berkshire Hathaway shareholders’ meeting
Society
Many are distressed by imperfections in China, so I ask – is china more or less imperfect as decades have gone by? it is moving in right direction. That is a good thing, and it is not good to pick worst thing about a person you don’t like and obsess about it.
Source: BRK Annual Meeting 2008 Boodell Notes