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141 " You should never test the depth of the water with both feet. "
― Warren Buffett
142 " From this irritating reality comes The First Law of Corporate Survival for ambitious CEOs who pile on leverage and run large and unfathomable derivatives books: Modest incompetence simply won’t do; it’s mindboggling screw-ups that are required. "
― Warren Buffett , Berkshire Hathaway Letters to Shareholders
143 " (Don’t ask the barber whether you need a haircut.) "
144 " Despite our policy of candor, we will discuss our activities in marketable securities only to the extent legally required. Good investment ideas are rare, valuable and subject to competitive appropriation just as good product or business acquisition ideas are. "
145 " the arithmetic makes it plain that inflation is a far more devastating tax than anything that has been enacted by our legislature. The inflation tax has a fantastic ability to simply consume capital. It makes no difference to a widow with her saving in a 5 percent passbook account whether she pays 100 percent income tax on her interest income during a period of zero inflation, or pays no income taxes during years of 5 percent inflation. Either way, she is 'taxed' in a manner that leave her no real income whatsoever. Any money she spends comes right out of capital. She would find outrageous a 120 percent income tax, but doesn't seem to notice that 5 percent inflation is the economic equivalent. "
146 " There's never just one cockroach in the kitchen. "
147 " It is madness to risk losing what you need in pursuing what you simply desire. "
― Warren Buffett , The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America
148 " I do wish, however, that Ms. Olson would give me some credit for the progress I’ve already made. In 1944, I filed my first 1040, reporting my income as a thirteen-year-old newspaper carrier. The return covered three pages. After I claimed the appropriate business deductions, such as $35 for a bicycle, my tax bill was $7. I sent my check to the Treasury and it — without comment — promptly cashed it. We lived in peace. "
149 " It’s not that I want money. It’s the fun if making money and watching it grow. "
150 " It’s not that I want money. It’s the fun of making money and watching it grow. "
151 " For Buffett, managers are stewards of shareholder capital. The best managers think like owners in making business decisions. "
152 " For investors as a whole, returns decrease as motion increases. "
153 " Αν όλο το παιχνίδι είχε να κάνει με το τι έγινε στο παρελθόν, τότε οι πιο πλούσιοι άνθρωποι θα ήταν βιβλιοθηκάριοι. "
154 " My favourite holding period is forever "
155 " A good business is not always a good purchase - although it's a good place to look for one. "
156 " I always find it extraordinary that so many studies are made of price and volume behavior, the stuff of chartists. Can you imagine buying an entire business simply because the price of the business had been marked up substantially last week and the week before? Of course, the reason a lot of studies are made of these price and volume variables is that now, in the age of computers, there are almost endless data available about them. It isn’t necessarily because such studies have any utility; it’s simply that the data are there and academicians have worked hard to learn the mathematical skills needed to manipulate them. Once these skills are acquired, it seems sinful not to use them, even if the usage has no utility or negative utility. As a friend said, to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. "
― Warren Buffett , The Intelligent Investor
157 " A small chance of distress or disgrace cannot, in our view, be offset by a large chance of extra returns. "
158 " If you've thought that investment advisors were hired to invest, you may be bewildered by this technique. After buying a farm, would a rational owner next order his real estate agent to start selling off pieces of it whenever a neighboring property was sold at a lower price? Or would you sell your house to whatever bidder was available at 9:31 on some morning merely because at 9:30 a similar house sold for less than it would have brought on the previous day? p213 "
159 " Read 500 pages like this every week. That’s how knowledge builds up, like compound interest. "
160 " The stock market is a device for transferring money from the impatient to the patient. "