Warren Buffett Quotes On Investing

I was searching the entire web for some of the famous quotes by Warren Buffett (Warren Buffet). I don’t know how many I’ve read. But I would like to share with you 79 of them which I find interesting and which makes sense. If you are an investor then it’s a must read! And feel free to comment below if I’d missed something! Happy Investing!

79 Famous Quotes by Warren Buffett on Investing

1. ‘Never invest in a business you cannot understand.’
2. ‘Always invest for the long term.’
3. ‘Buy a business, don’t rent stocks.’
4. ‘Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.’
5. ‘I really like my life. I’ve arranged my life so that I can do what I want.’
6. ‘We will only do with your money what we would do with our own.’
7. ‘If you don’t feel comfortable owning something for 10 years, then don’t own it for 10 minutes.’
8. ‘I am a better investor because I am a businessman and a better businessman because I am an investor.’
9. ‘Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.’
10. ‘The Stock Market is designed to transfer money from the Active to the Patient.’
11. ‘Stop trying to predict the direction of the stock market, the economy, interest rates, or elections.’
12. ‘I never attempt to make money on the stock market. I buy on the assumption that they could close the market the next day and not reopen it for ten years.’
13. ‘I don’t look to jump over 7-foot bars: I look around for 1-foot bars that I can step over.’
14. ‘For some reason, people take their cues from price action rather than from values. What doesn’t work is when you start doing things that you don’t understand or because they worked last week for somebody else. The dumbest reason in the world to buy a stock is because it’s going up.’
15. ‘We don’t get paid for activity, just for being right. As to how long we will wait, we’ll wait indefinitely.’
16. ‘As Buffet said in the speech, “He’s not looking at quarterly earnings projections, he’s not looking at next year’s earnings, he’s not thinking about what day of the week it is, he doesn’t care what investment research from any place says, he’s not interested in price momentum, volume or anything. He’s simply asking: What is the business worth?’
17. ‘Buy companies with strong histories of profitability and with a dominant business franchise.’
18. ‘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.’
19. ‘When asked how he became so successful in investing, Buffett answered: ‘we read hundreds and hundreds of annual reports every year.’
20. ‘When a management team with a reputation for brilliance joins a business with poor fundamental economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact.’
21. ‘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.’
22. ‘Diversification is a protection against ignorance. It makes very little sense for those who know what they’re doing.’
23. ‘Wide diversification is only required when investors do not understand what they are doing.’
24. ‘You’re neither right nor wrong because other people agree with you. You’re right because your facts are right and your reasoning is right – that’s the only thing that makes you right. And if your facts and reasoning are right, you don’t have to worry about anybody else.’
25. ‘It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.’
26. ‘The first rule is not to lose. The second rule is not to forget the first rule.’
27. ‘Only buy something that you’d be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for 10 years.’
28. ‘I will tell you how to become rich. Close the doors. Be fearful when others are greedy. Be greedy when others are fearful.’
29. ‘Why not invest your assets in the companies you really like? As Mae West said, ‘Too much of a good thing can be wonderful.’
30. ‘Our favorite holding period is forever.’
31. ‘Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing.’
32. ‘Time is the friend of the wonderful company, the enemy of the mediocre.’
33. ‘Unless you can watch your stock holding decline by 50% without becoming panic-stricken, you should not be in the stock market.’
34. ‘The critical investment factor is determining the intrinsic value of a business and paying a fair or bargain price.’
35. ‘Investors making purchases in an overheated market need to recognize that it may often take an extended period for the value of even an outstanding company to catch up with the price they paid.’
36. ‘Risk can be greatly reduced by concentrating on only a few holdings.’
37. ‘It is not necessary to do extraordinary things to get extraordinary results.’
38. ‘An investor should ordinarily hold a small piece of an outstanding business with the same tenacity that an owner would exhibit if he owned all of that business.’
39. ‘Great investment opportunities come around when excellent companies are surrounded by unusual circumstances that cause the stock to be misappraised.’
40. ‘In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield.’
41. ‘If a business does well, the stock eventually follows.’
42. ‘Cash never makes us happy, but it’s better to have the money burning a hole in Berkshire’s pocket than resting comfortably in someone else’s.’
43. ‘A public-opinion poll is no substitute for thought.’
44. ‘I never buy anything unless I can fill out on a piece of paper my reasons. I may be wrong, but I would know the answer to that. “I’m paying $32 billion today for the Coca Cola Company because.” If you can’t answer that question, you shouldn’t buy it. If you can answer that question, and you do it a few times, you’ll make a lot of money.’
45. ‘The investor of today does not profit from yesterday’s growth.’
46. ‘You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don’t do too many things wrong.’
47. ‘It’s far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price.’
48. ‘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.’
49. ‘Look at market fluctuations as your friend rather than your enemy; profit from folly rather than participate in it.’
50. ‘An investor needs to do very few things right as long as he or she avoids big mistakes.’
51. ‘Do a lot of reading’ (On how to determine the value of a business)
52. ‘The investor of today does not profit from yesterday’s growth.’
53. ‘Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked.’
54. ‘The fact that people will be full of greed, fear, or folly is predictable. The sequence is not predictable.’
55. ‘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.’
56. ‘Time is the friend of the wonderful company, the enemy of the mediocre.’
57. ‘I do not like debt and do not like to invest in companies that have too much debt, particularly long-term debt. With long-term debt, increases in interest rates can drastically affect company profits and make future cash flows less predictable.’
58. ‘We will reject interesting opportunities rather than over-leverage our balance sheet.’
59. ‘I always knew I was going to be rich. I don’t think I ever doubted it for a minute.’
60. ‘Turnarounds seldom turn.’
61. ‘If at first you do succeed, quit trying on investing.’
62. ‘I don’t measure my life by the money I’ve made. Other people might, but certainly don’t.’
63. ‘Anything can happen in stock markets and you ought to conduct your affairs so that if the most extraordinary events happen, that you’re still around to play the next day.’
64. ‘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.’
65. ‘With few exceptions when a manager with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for poor economics, it is the reputation of the business which remains intact.’
66. ‘The business schools reward complex behavior more than simple behavior, but simple behavior is more effective.’
67. ‘It’s not debt per say that overwhelms an individual corporation or country. Rather it is a continuous increase in debt in relation to income that causes trouble.’
68. ‘A great investment opportunity occurs when a marvelous business encounters a one-time huge, but solvable problem.’
69. ‘You do not adequately protect yourself by being half awake when other are sleeping.’
70. ‘We like to buy businesses, but we don’t like to sell them.’
71. ‘Money to some extent sometimes let you be in more interesting environments. But it can’t change how many people love you or how healthy you are.’
72. ‘It’s us fun being a gorse when the tractor comes along, or the blacksmith when the car comes along.’
73. ‘Enjoy your work and work for whom you admire.’
74. ‘With enough insider information and a million dollars, you can go broke in a year.’
75. ‘Read Ben Graham and Phil Fisher read annual reports, but don’t do equations with Greek letters in them.’
76. ‘In a commodity business, it’s very hard to be smarter than your dumbest competitor.’
77. ‘A hyperactive stock market is the pickpocket of enterprise.’
78. ‘Valuing a business is part art and part science.’
79. ‘Chains of habits are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.’

Read: 99 Inspirational & Motivational Quotes On Entrepreneurship

BONUS: Another 6 Excellent Quotes by Warren Buffett

On Earning: “Never depend on single income. Make investment to create a second source.”

On Spending: “If you buy things you do not need, soon you will have to sell things you need.”

On Saving: “Do not save what is left after spending, but spend what is left after saving.”

On Risk: “Never test the depth of river with both the feet.”

On Investment: “Do not put all your eggs in one basket.”

On Expectation: “Honesty is very expensive gift. Do not expect it from cheap people.”

79 Warren Buffett Quotes On Investing is a post by Minterest

If you’re an investor then you probably know how to value a startup, stock, business, company or whatever it is. But the valuation of web properties (and blogs) is entirely different when compared to a real business.

Okay, I’m NOT going to review any of those stupid website valuation tools or free domain appraisal services as they’re completely absurd. They all value a website based on Google PageRank and Alexa Traffic and show inflated traffic estimates based on that. At least they could have used SEOmoz stats while valuing a domain name and its link profile but they don’t.

[quote]The only person who could value your domain or website is you![/quote]

You decide whether to sell or not. If someone offered X dollars for your website and you think that your website will be able to generate more income than that then it’s not a good idea to sell!

Why You Should Value A Website Before Buying/Selling

No matter if you’re a buyer or a seller of a website, you should know how to value it, right? Now, why do someone buy a website from you? Well, it’s simply because your website have some value and someone wants to buy it since he don’t want to build it from scratch. A website’s value depends on its traffic & traffic growth, revenue & revenue growth, type of website (blog, services, e-commerce etc.), domain name & its age, link profile, third-party stats (Alexa Traffic Rank, Google PageRank, SEOmoz profile etc. to some extent) and of course its brand name.

(Buyers) You Shouldn’t Buy A Blog…

Let me repeat it once again. You should never buy a blog unless it’s got commercial value. It means you should buy a ‘business’ and not a ‘blog’. Weblogs are just personal journals and is popular only because of its author and his/her effort. If you buy someone else’s blog (even if it’s making hundreds of thousands of dollars a month) it’s more likely that the earnings won’t sustain for long time.

The best example is NetBusinessBlog.com which was started in January 2007 (the year I became serious about blogging). It was a popular Internet Marketing blog at that time and was sold for $13,000 in the same year. If I’m right it had some 25,000 RSS subscribers. Today, the blog is dead and is parked.

Buying & Selling Websites: What Factors Should You Consider?

Domain Name

Your domain name is the face of your online business, right? So, how good is your domain name? Is it short, easy-to-remember, brandable, and moreover a .com? If so, then it deserves a premium.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Value

How good is your website’s Search Engine Optimization (SEO) profile? If it’s a blog then are your blogposts in Top 10 if you search the title of your posts in Google? If so, then it must be performing well on search engines or at least have the potential to perform better.

Traffic & Its Source

Now, where does the traffic come from? Is it mostly search engines (organic/paid) or referral or direct traffic? If it’s mostly search engine traffic then your website must be performing well on search engine results page (SERP) and can be monetized easily according to your website audience as the most quality traffic comes from search engines and not from referral sites or social media. Also, how’s the traffic growth? Has the traffic improved constantly over time?

Website Profile

Now, how about your website’s profile? Does your site have a good Alexa rank and a natural PageRank or is it manipulated by buying paid links and posts? Also, how about the SEOmoz metrics – domain authority, page authority, backlink profile, search engine rankings etc.

Monthly Revenue & Source 

Monthly revenue is perhaps the most important factor that someone considers when buying a website or a business or anything. Everyone follows one simple thumb rule to value a website or a blog. If the asking price is less than or equal to 6 times its monthly earnings then the website is already sold. Otherwise a reasonable valuation would be 10 – 12 times your monthly earnings.

Now, where does the revenue come from? Is it advertising, donation, subscription, products, or services? Has the revenue also improved consistently over time?

If your website has registered members then they have a ‘customer value’ as they keep coming back. For example, Facebook. The valuation of Facebook was over $100 bn at the time of IPO (which is 100 times its annual earnings).

If your website’s 80% traffic is from search engines then what is its value? The simple method to identify the traffic value is by finding the top keywords that is driving traffic from search engines and analyzing its Cost Per Click (CPC) value from Google AdWords Keyword Tool.

Let’s say, your website for sale is related to “payday loans” and you’re getting monthly unique visitors of 1,000. Let the average CPC for keywords related to payday loans be $1. So, it means that your monthly traffic is worth $1,000.

Content

Okay, now how about the content and its quality? Are they poor, unique or completely original? If it’s of low quality then it doesn’t deserve much valuation as future search engine algorithmic updates may penalize it. If it’s original then it’s more likely that it will perform better with each algorithmic update.

Rebuilding From Scratch

Okay, the final valuation method is rebuilding the website from scratch to where it is now. So, you need to assess the cost to build the website once again from scratch. That is, from designing to content creation to time factors to marketing. In short you need to analyze the effort, time and cost required to create the website again. And don’t forget to value your existing backlink profile as a natural backlink from an authority domain in your niche is priceless.

What’s Your Website Or Blog Really Worth?

Flippa (most popular marketplace for buying and selling websites) offers a free website valuation tool. But again, it’s not reliable and shows somewhat weird stats unless we enter traffic and revenue information. Once we enter the traffic and revenue stats it gives better valuation. From my analysis I noted that they’re just valuing websites based on its earnings (i.e. 9 – 18 times its monthly earnings).

Okay, So How Do We Value A Website?

It’s very simple to get an accurate valuation, thanks to Flippa itself! How? Well, you can use the Flippa Advanced Search and track the listings which have been sold which is the best way to value your website.

1. Filter The Flippa Listings

First, enter the keywords (the niche of your website for sale) and filter the Flippa listing to match the profile of your website (make sure that you selected “Won Listings” under “AUCTION STATUS”).

2. Analyze The Won Listings

Analyze “Won Listings” in the search results and find the website which have similar profile as yours like domain age, PageRank, visits, revenue, Alexa rank, link profile etc.

It’s as simple as that!

Now, Where To Sell Your Website

Okay. You want to sell your website or a blog, right? So, where should you list your website? You can list your website on marketplaces (buy & sell), forums, or using a “for sale” banner on your website. Let me review the most effective ways to sell your website/blog.

Flippa [Paid]

Flippa is the number one marketplace for buying and selling websites. It is a dedicated website for buying and selling websites (supports escrow) and have over 200,000 registered users with thousands of users online at any instant. It’s among top 1,000 sites according to Alexa. Since there’s a listing and success fee only serious sellers uses Flippa. The listing fee is $29 and the success fee is 5%.

According to Flippa,

Over $400,000 worth of websites sold weekly (examples include Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook predecessor Facemash.com as well as Retweet.com, s9.com, and Qwitter). More than 4,000 bids for websites are placed each week. Over $60,000,000 in websites sold since we started.

BrandBucket [Free]

If you own a good brandable domain name then you can consider Brand Bucket. If your domain name is awesome then they will list your domain with a professionally designed logo and help you get it sold. They accept and offer only quality (short, memorable, non-keyword, brandable) domain names. It’s like a marketplace for creative domain names only (unlike a Sedo, Pool, Namecheap, or a GoDaddy).

Digital Point Forum [Free]

Digital Point Forum have over 500,000 registered members. You can list your Domain Names for sale or Websites for sale there for free. It’s a perfect marketplace for selling blogs, niche websites, domain names and websites whose value is less than $3,000.

NamePros [Free]

NamePros is a community for domain name owners. They have a Domain Name Marketplace where you can list your domain names for free. Domain Names for sale are categorized as Fixed Price, Auction, Bargain Bin (priced less than $20), ccTLD Domains, etc.

WebsiteBroker [Paid]

You can buy and sell domain names/websites at WebsiteBroker marketplace. It is free to browse the websites for sale but listing (standard) costs $9.95 for 90 days and premium listing costs $14.95 (domain names) & $29.95 (websites) which gives more exposure for your website. There’s no commission for successful sale of domains or websites as all you pay is the initial listing fee.

Image Credit: Free Digital Photos

How To Value A Website/Blog: What’s Your Site Really Worth? is a post by Minterest