20 Great Warren Buffett Quotes
So I spend quite a bit of time on this site talking about technical indicators that we should be aware of as Traders which I believe are very important when it comes to trading, particularly for short to medium term traders. But what about the Fundamentals of a company? Certainly they should not be ignored either. I’ve always tried to go down the route of first using the fundamentals of a company to help identify companies I might want to trade and then move onto the technicals to help identify specific entry and exit points. Fundamentals are even more important for longer term investors and there is arguably no greater long term investor than Warren Buffett, the Sage of Omaha.
Like most people interested in investing, stocks, companies, business in general, Buffett has a been a bit of a hero of mine over the years. From his amazing approach to identifying companies to invest in to his excellent Berkshire Hathaway Annual Shareholders Letter to his brilliant quotes, he has certainly made the world of business and investing much more interesting for me. Buffett is a true fundamentals investor, he believes in investing in great companies for the long term. And his investment strategy has certainly paid off with his success unparalled in the modern day business world. The share price of Berkshire Hathaway (the company which effectively manages Buffett’s investments) has risen from just over $20 a share back in 1967 to a high of over $141,000 a share in December 2007. It has dropped back recently like all investments but still sits at over $91,000 a share today. To consistently achieve an annualized return of over 20% a year for over 40 years is pretty incredible! If I can achieve anything like that in my trading career I’ll be a happy little spread trader indeed!
But back to the focus of this post, there are are literally hundreds upon hundreds of Warren Buffett quotes out there, full of great advice, wit and wisdom. Everyone has their favourites and today I thought I’d share my Top 20 Warren Buffett Quotes with you. So starting at No. 20 and working up, here we go:
20. The only time to buy these is on a day with no “y” in it.
19. Time is the friend of the wonderful company, the enemy of the mediocre.
18. The investor of today does not profit from yesterday’s growth.
17. If past history was all there was to the game, the richest people would be librarians.
16. You only have to do a few things right in your life so long as you don’t do too many things wrong.
15. I don’t look to jump over 7-foot bars, I look around for 1-foot bars that I can step over.
14. Investors making purchases in an overheated market need to recognise that it may often take an extended period for the value of even an outstanding company to catch up with the price they paid.
13. It’s far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price.
12. Of the billionaires I have known, money just brings out the basic traits in them. If they were jerks before they had money, they are simple jerks with a billion dollars.
11. Only buy something that you’d be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for 10 years.
10. Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive then energy devoted to patching leaks.
9. I’ve reluctantly discarded the notion of my continuing to manage the portfolio after my death – abondonng my hope to give new meaning to the phrase “thinking outside the box”.
8. There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult.
7. Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked.
6. Risk comes from not knowing what you are doing.
5. If a business does well, the stock eventually follows.
4. A public opinion poll is no substitute for thought.
3. Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.
2. It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that you will do things differently.
1. We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful.
So there you go, that’s my 20 favourite Buffett quotes. If you have any others which you’d like to share use the Comments box below, that’s what it’s there for after all!
