Stocks From Warren Buffett Quotes & Sayings

You should look at stocks as small pieces of business. — Warren Buffett

Don't invest in pieces of papers (stocks), invest in great businesses underlying them — Warren Buffett

Trying to pick individual stocks is a trap. I can't do it. Warren Buffett can, but hardly anyone else can beat the indexes over a long period of time. — Ben Stein

A prediction about the direction of the stock market tells you nothing about where stocks are headed, but a whole lot about the person doing the predicting. — Warren Buffett

The time to buy stocks is consistently over time. You should never buy your investments with the idea, 'I have to get a certain return.' You should look at the best return possible and learn to live with that. But you should not try to make your investments earn what you feel you need. It doesn't work that way. The stock doesn't know you own it. — Warren Buffett

Most people get interested in stocks when everyone else is. The time to get interested is when no one else is. You can't buy what is popular and do well. — Warren Buffett

The American economy is going to do fine. But it won't do fine every year and every week and every month. I mean, if you don't believe that, forget about buying stocks anyway ... It's a positive-sum game, long term. And the only way an investor can get killed is by high fees or by trying to outsmart the market. — Warren Buffett

Investors ... can't pick stocks that are better than average. Stocks are a good thing to own over time. There's only two things you can do wrong: You can buy the wrong ones, and you can buy or sell them at the wrong time. And the truth is you never need to sell them. — Warren Buffett

If you expect to continue to purchase stocks throughout your life, you should welcome price declines as a way to add stocks more cheaply to your portfolio. — Warren Buffett

There is one thing of which I can assure you. If good performance of the fund is even a minor objective, any portfolio encompassing one hundred stocks (whether the manager is handling one thousand dollars or one billion dollars) is not being operated logically. The addition of the one hundredth stock simply can't reduce the potential variance in portfolio performance sufficiently to compensate for the negative effect its inclusion has on the overall portfolio expectation. — Warren Buffett

There are three important principles to Graham's approach. [The first is to look at stocks as fractional shares of a business, which] gives you an entirely different view than most people who are in the market. [The second principle is the margin-of-safety concept, which] gives you the competitive advantage. [The third is having a true investor's attitude toward the stock market, which] if you have that attitude, you start out ahead of 99 percent of all the people who are operating in the stock market - it's an enormous advantage. — Warren Buffett

Buy stocks like you buy your groceries, not like you buy your perfume. — Warren Buffett

You have to understand accounting and you have to understand the nuances of accounting. It's the language of business and it's an imperfect language, but unless you are willing to put in the effort to learn accounting - how to read and interpret financial statements - you really shouldn't select stocks yourself — Warren Buffett

All there is to investing is picking good stocks at good times and staying with them as long as they remain good companies. — Warren Buffett

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

You should be unconcerned about short-term price action when you own the securities directly, just as you were unconcerned when you owned them indirectly through BPL. I think about them as businesses, not "stocks", and if the business does all right over the long term, so will the stock. — Warren Buffett

Buy a business, don't rent stocks. — Warren Buffett

Warren Buffett is famous for talking about the 'intrinsic value' of stocks. But while many people parrot this phrase, few know what it really means. — Robert Kiyosaki

Stocks of companies selling commodity-like products should come with a warning label: Competition may prove hazardous to human wealth. — Warren Buffett

If you know how to value businesses, it's crazy to own 50 stocks or 40 stocks or 30 stocks, probably because there aren't that many wonderful businesses understandable to a single human being in all likelihood. To forego buying more of some super-wonderful business and instead put your money into #30 or #35 on your list of attractiveness just strikes Charlie and me as madness. — Warren Buffett

Investment philosophy is the clear understanding that by owning shares of stocks he owns businesses, not pieces of paper. — Warren Buffett

You shouldn't own common stocks if a 50 per cent decrease in their value in a short period of time would cause you acute distress. — Warren Buffett

An irresistable footnote: in 1971, pension fund managers invested a record 122% of net funds available in equities - at full prices they couldn't buy enough of them. In 1974, after the bottom had fallen out, they committed a then record low of 21% to stocks. — Warren Buffett

Market prices for stocks fluctuate at great amplitudes around intrinsic value but, over the long term, intrinsic value is virtually always reflected at some point in market price. — Warren Buffett

Investors have to remember: corporate profits are going up, but stocks are going up faster. How can that continue indefinitely? Investors can only earn what companies themselves can earn; the government or the markets themselves don't kick anything in. How can you get anything more out of a farm than what it grows? — Warren Buffett

Most investors, both institutional and individual, will find that the best way to own common stocks (shares') is through an index fund that charges minimal fees. Those following this path are sure to beat the net results (after fees and expenses) of the great majority of investment professionals. — Warren Buffett

I think the worst mistake you can make in stocks is to buy or sell based on current headlines, — Warren Buffett

It's quite clear that stocks are cheaper than bonds. I can't imagine anybody having bonds in their portfolio when they can own equities, a diversified group of equities. But people do because they, the lack of confidence. But that's what makes for the attractive prices. If they had their confidence back, they wouldn't be selling at these prices. And believe me, it will come back over time. — Warren Buffett

Only those who will be sellers of equities in the near future should be happy at seeing stocks rise. Prospective purchasers should much prefer sinking prices. — Warren Buffett

As long as you have markets, you'll have excesses. People went crazy with tulip bulbs. They went crazy with the South Sea Bubble, they went crazy internet stocks, they went crazy with the uranium stocks back when I was first getting started. I mean, you know, you're not going to change the human animal. And the human animal really doesn't get a lot smarter. — Howard Warren Buffett