19 Posts found for Author: Warren Buffett

A Russian roulette equation — usually win, occasionally die — may make financial sense for someone who gets a piece of a company’s upside but does not share in its downside. But that strategy would be madness for Berkshire. Rational people don’t risk what they have and need for what they don’t have and don’t need.

Content: Quotation | Author: Warren Buffett | Subjects: Corporate Governance, Risk Management

Borrowed money causes more people to go broke than anything else. Charlie Munger has said, smart people “go broke from liquor, ladies and leverage”

Content: Quotation | Authors: Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett | Subjects: Finance, Personal Development

My successor will need one other particular strength: the ability to fight off the ABCs of business decay, which are arrogance, bureaucracy and complacency. When these corporate cancers metastasize, even the strongest of companies can falter.

Content: Quotation | Author: Warren Buffett | Source: BusinessWeek | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

Truly great businesses, earning huge returns on tangible assets, can’t for any extended period reinvest a large portion of their earnings internally at high rates of return.

Content: Quotation | Author: Warren Buffett | Source: BsinessWeek | Subjects: Business Rules, Management, Strategy

Warren Buffett sits down with Fortune Magazine’s Pattie Sellers to discuss the changing landscape for women in business.

Content: Multimedia Content | Author: Warren Buffett | Source: FORTUNE | Subjects: People, Women in Business

Prompted by all the “Mr. Market” manic-depressive excitement about Facebook, tech, and the world at large, I’m thrilled to offer an exclusive excerpt from a new 81-page book: A Few Lessons for Investors and Managers from Warren E. Buffett.

In it, author Peter Bevelin distills hundreds of pages of annual reports and Berkshire’s An Owner’s Manual into bite-sized principles and key quotes. Of this lightweight handbook, … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Peter Bevelin, Tim Ferriss, Warren Buffett | Subject: Management

Severe change and exceptional returns usually don’t go together.
Most investors, of course, behave as if just the opposite were true. That is, they usually confer the highest price-earnings ratios on exotic-sounding businesses that hold out the promise of feverish change.

That prospect lets investors fantasize about future profitability rather than face today’s business realities. For such investor-dreamers, any blind date is preferable to one with the … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Warren Buffett | Subject: Investing

Should you find yourself in a chronically-leaking boat, energy devoted
to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.

Content: Quotation | Author: Warren Buffett | Subject: Business Rules

Both our operating and investment experience cause us to conclude that “turn-arounds” seldom turn, and that the same energies and talent are much better employed in a good business purchased at a fair price than in a poor business purchased at a bargain price.

Content: Quotation | Author: Warren Buffett | Subject: Business Rules

In many businesses particularly those that have high asset/profit ratios—inflation causes some or all of the reported earnings to become ersatz. The ersatz portion—let’s call these earnings “restricted”—cannot, if the business is to retain its economic position, be distributed as dividends. Were these earnings to be paid out, the business would lose ground in one or more of the following areas: Its ability to maintain … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Warren Buffett | Subject: Business Rules

If a business requires a superstar to produce great results, the business itself cannot be deemed great.

Content: Quotation | Author: Warren Buffett | Subjects: Business Plans, Miscellaneous

We react with great caution to suggestions that our poor businesses can be restored to satisfactory profitability by major capital expenditures. (The projections will be dazzling and the advocates sincere, but, in the end, major additional investment in a terrible industry usually is about as rewarding as struggling in quicksand.)

Content: Quotation | Author: Warren Buffett | Subject: Business Rules

“I will tell you how to become rich. Be fearful when others are greedy. Be greedy when others are fearful.”

Content: Quotation | Author: Warren Buffett | Subjects: Market/Investment, Personal Development, Success / Failure

If a business requires a superstar to produce great results, the business itself cannot be deemed great.

Content: Quotation | Author: Warren Buffett | Source: Leader to Leader | Subjects: Leadership, Management, Organizational Behavior

Somebody once said that in looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. But if they don’t have the first, the other two will kill you.

Content: Quotation | Author: Warren Buffett | Subject: Human Resources

Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful.

Content: Quotation | Author: Warren Buffett | Source: The New York Times | Subjects: Investing, Wisdom

Tell me who your heroes are and I’ll tell you how you’ll turn out to be.

Content: Quotation | Author: Warren Buffett | Subjects: Personal Development, Personality / Behavior

Here are notes from a Q&A session with Buffett hosted for students from Emory’s Goizueta Business School and McCombs School of Business at UT Austin.

Content: Thought Leader | Authors: Dang Le, Warren Buffett | Subjects: Market/Investment, Miscellaneous

A reprint of pages 13 to 15 of the 2002 Berkshire Hathaway annual report in which Warren Buffet discusses his thoughts on derivatives.

Content: Article | Author: Warren Buffett | Source: Financial Engineering News | Subject: Finance