Stock Market Investment Strategies

And you're not going to pick the bottom and you're not going to,

nobody else can pick it for you or anything of the sort.

You've got to be prepared when you buy a stock

to have it be down 50% or more.

And be comfortable with it as long as you're comfortable with the holding.

And I pointed out,

I think a year, maybe two years ago in the annual report,

well just the one before this most recent one,

I pointed out that there have been three times in Berkshire's history

when the price of Berkshire stock went down 50%, three different times.

Now if you owed it on borrowed money,

you could have been cleaned out.

There wasn't anything wrong with Berkshire when those three times occurred.

But if you're going to look at the price of the stock

and think that you have to act because it's doing this or that or somebody else tells you,

how can you stay with that when something else is going up?

You've got to be in the right psychological position.

And frankly,

some people are not really careful.

Some people are more subject to fear than others.

It's like the virus.

It strikes some people with much greater ferocity than others.

And fear is something I really never felt financially.

I don't think Charlie's felt it either.

Some people can handle it psychologically.

If you can't handle it psychologically, then you really shouldn't own stocks

because you're going to buy and sell them at the wrong time.

And you should not count on somebody else telling you this.

You should do something you understand yourself.

If you don't understand it yourself, you're going to be affected by the next person you talk to.

So you should be in a position to hold.

And I don't know whether today is a great day to buy stocks.

I know it will work out over 20 or 30 years.

I don't know whether it will work out over two years at all.

I have no idea whether you'll be ahead or behind on a stock you buy on Monday morning.