Investing is simple, but it's not easy

Investing is simple but it's not easy. Because emotions get in people's way or greed and that sort of thing. They get all excited about stocks when they've gone up recently, and they get depressed when they've gone down.

- Warren Buffett

Keep emotion out of investing

The best advice I've received on investing I received in chapters eight and 20 of 'The Intelligent Investor'. That's the framework for what I do in investing.

- Warren Buffett

The emotion Buffet refers to here is nothing but "keeping emotion out of investing". In his own words he said "Take the emotion out of it (investing) and just simply stick with good businesses."

Annual Reports

Warren was so successful because he sits on his ass and reads (those annual reports).

- Charles Munger

Those who are ahead

If you simply read the annual report of a company, you're ahead of 98% of the people on Wall Street. If you read the footnotes, you're ahead of 100% of them.

- Jim Rogers

Certainty

I put a heavy weight on certainty. If you do that, the whole idea of a risk factor doesn't make any sense to me.

- Warren Buffett

Illustrate

Never invest in any idea you can't illustrate with a crayon.

- Peter Lynch

Right a few times

I need only need to be right a few times and can let thousands of ideas go by.

- Warren Buffett

What you don't understand

On not investing in technology stocks ... It means we miss a lot of very big winners. But we wouldn't know how to pick them out anyway. It also means we have very few big losers - and that's quite helpful over time. We're perfectly willing to trade away a big payoff for a certain payoff.

- Warren Buffett

If you can't explain, don't do it

You ought to be able to explain why you're taking the job you're taking, why you're making the investment you're making, or whatever it may be. And if it can't stand applying pencil to paper, you'd better think it through some more. And if you can't write an intelligent answer to those questions, don't do it.

- Warren Buffett

Quality merchandise

Whether we're talking about socks or stocks, I like buying quality merchandise when it is marked down.

- Warren Buffett

Plant and reap the benefit

Someone's sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.

- Warren Buffett

Single wonderful business

A lot of great fortunes in the world have been made by owning a single wonderful business. If you understand the business, you don't need to own very many of them.

- Warren Buffett

Sound investing

Graham wasn't about brilliant investments and he wasn't about fads or fashion. He was about sound investing, and I think sound investing can make you very wealthy if you're not in too big of a hurry. And it never makes you poor, which is better.

- Warren Buffett

No success is worthwhile if ...

No success or achievement in material terms is worthwhile unless it serves the needs or interest of the country and its people, and is achieved by fair and honest means.

- J.R.D.Tata

Clarity comes with ideas

There's a clarity that comes with great ideas: You can explain why something's a great business, how and why it's cheap, why it's cheap for temporary reasons and how, on a normal basis, it should be trading at a much higher level. You're never sitting there on the 40th page of your spreadsheet, as Buffett would say, agonizing over whether you should buy or not.

- Joel Greenblatt

Conventional diversification makes no sense

If you are a know-something investor, able to understand business economics and to find five to ten sensibly priced companies that possess important long-term competitive advantage, conventional diversification makes no sense for you.

- Warren Buffett

Wall street and you

Wall Street makes its money on activity. You make your money on inactivity.

- Warren Buffett

Sucess by business and not by share prices

Charlie and I let our marketable equities tell us by their operating results-not by their daily, or even yearly, price quotations-whether our investments are successful. The market may ignore business success for a while, but eventually will confirm it.

- Warren Buffett

Wall street's confusion

Wall Street sometimes gets confused between risk and uncertainty, and you can profit handsomely from that confusion. The low-risk, high-uncertainty [situation] gives us our most sought after coin-toss odds. Heads, I win; tails, I don’t lose much!

- Mohnish Pabrai

Holding stocks in high inflation period

Partly, it’s habit. Partly, it’s just that stocks mean business, and owning businesses is much more interesting than owning gold or farmland. Besides, stocks are probably still the best of all the poor alternatives in an era of inflation - at least they are if you buy in at appropriate prices.

- Warren Buffett (on why he holds stocks even in times of high inflation)

Business schools

The business schools reward difficult complex behavior more than simple behavior, but simple behavior is more effective.

- Warren Buffett

Fortunes built from ...

A disproportionate number of the great business fortunes built up during the inflationary years arose from ownership of operations that combined intangibles of lasting value with relatively minor requirements for tangible assets.

- Warren Buffett

Human nature

Human beings are subject to wild swings in their levels of fear, risk tolerance and greed. That won’t change. I base my whole approach on buying when others are fearful and selling when others are greedy. The reason Shakespeare is so relevant still today is that his plays were all about human nature, and human nature never changes.

- Mark Sellers

Not to panic is still a decision

You can wait for opportunities that fit your criteria and if you don’t find them, patiently wait. Deciding not to panic is still a decision.

- Seth Klarman