What an investor needs is the ability to correctly evaluate selected businesses. Note that word "selected": You don't have to be an expert on every company, or even many. You only have to be able to evaluate companies within your circle of competence. The size of that circle is not very important; knowing its boundaries, however, is vital.
Investing
The architecture of patience
What's going to stay the same in the next ten years. While boring, offer the best investment opportunities.
The stock market is a device for transferring money from the impatient to the patient.
Risk comes from not knowing what you're doing. Never invest in a business you cannot understand.
Price is what you pay; value is what you get. The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.
Diversification is protection against ignorance. It makes little sense if you know what you are doing.
The most important quality for an investor is temperament, not intellect. You need a temperament that neither derives great pleasure from being with the crowd or against the crowd.
Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful.
If you aren't thinking about owning a stock for ten years, don't even think about owning it for ten minutes.
It's far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price.
The investor's chief problem - and even his worst enemy - is likely to be himself.
In the short run, the market is a voting machine but in the long run, it is a weighing machine.
Waiting helps you as an investor and a lot of people just can't stand to wait. If you didn't get the deferred-gratification gene, you've got to work very hard to overcome that.
The key to investing is not assessing how much an industry is going to affect society, or how much it will grow, but rather determining the competitive advantage of any given company and, above all, the durability of that advantage.
You do things when the opportunities come along. I've had periods in my life when I've had a bundle of ideas come along, and I've had long dry spells. If I get an idea next week, I'll do something. If not, I won't do a damn thing.
The most dangerous thing is to buy something at the peak of its popularity. At that point, all the good news is already factored into the price, and all the bad news lies ahead.
Investing is laying out money now to get more money back in the future - at an acceptable rate of return and risk.
The best investment you can make is in your own abilities. Anything you can do to develop your own abilities or business is likely to be more productive.
We don't have to be smarter than the rest. We have to be more disciplined than the rest.
Time is the friend of the wonderful business, the enemy of the mediocre.