I think that people underestimate – until they get older – they underestimate just how important habits are, and how difficult they are to change when you’re forty-five or fifty, and how important it is that you form the right ones when you’re young.
Perfection
If you expect perfection in your spouse or in your friends or in companies you’re not going to find it.
SPACs
The SPACs generally have to spend their money in two years, as I understand it. If you have to buy a business in two years, you put a gun to my head and said you’ve got to buy a business in two years, I’d buy one but it wouldn’t be much of one. If you’re running money from somebody else and you get a fee and you get the upside and you don’t have the downside, you’re going to buy something.
Bitcoin or crypto
I knew there’d be a question on bitcoin or crypto and I thought to myself well, I watch these politicians dodge questions all the time … The truth is, I’m going to dodge that question. Because the truth is, we’ve probably got hundreds of thousands of people that are watching this that own bitcoin. And we’ve probably got two people that are short. So we’ve got a choice of making 400,000 people mad at us and unhappy, and making two people happy. And it’s just a dumb equation.
Gambling chips
But I think what America has accomplished is pretty admirable overall. And I think actually American corporations have turned out to be a wonderful place for people to put their money and save. But they also make terrific gambling chips, and if you cater to those gambling chips when people have money in their pocket for the first time and you tell them take my 30 or 40 or 50 trades a day and you’re not charging commission… I hope we don’t have more of it.
Gambling instincts
I think the degree to which a very rich society can reward people who know how to take advantage, essentially, of the gambling instincts of the American public, the worldwide public – it’s not the most admirable part of the accomplishment.
Coca-Cola
If you gave me $100 billion and said take away the soft drink leadership of Coca-Cola in the world, I’d give it back to you and say it can’t be done.
All the diversification you need
If you can identify six wonderful businesses, that is all the diversification you need, and you’re going to make a lot of money, and I will guarantee you that going into a seventh one rather than putting more money in your first one is a terrible mistake.
$1 million
If I was running $1 million today, or $10 million for that matter, I’d be fully invested. Anyone who says that size does not hurt investment performance is selling. The highest rates of return I’ve ever achieved were in the 1950s. I killed the Dow. You ought to see the numbers. But I was investing peanuts then. It’s a huge structural advantage not to have a lot of money. I think I could make you 50% a year on $1 million. No, I know I could. I guarantee that.
Prices
Prices don’t tell me anything about a business