Emory's Goizueta Business School and McCombs School of Business at UT Austin w/Mr. Buffett.

• Charlie and I operated mostly with 5 positions. If I were running 50-200 million, I would have 80% in 5 positions, with 25% for the largest. In 1964 I found a position I was willing to go heavier into, up to 40%. The position was American Express. In 1951 I put the bulk of my net worth into GEICO.
• Over the past 50-60 years, Charlie and I have never permanently lost more than 2% of our personal worth on a position. We’ve suffered quotational loss, 50% movements. That’s why you should never borrow money.
• Snickers has been the #1 candy bar for the past 40 years. If you gave me $1 billion to knock off Snickers, I can’t do it. That’s the test of a good business.
• To focus on what you don’t have is a terrible mistake. With the gifts all of us have, if you are unhappy, it’s your own fault.
• If you have a lot of people that would hide you, then you can feel pretty good about how you’ve lived your life. I know people on the Forbes 400 list whose children would not hide them. The most powerful force in the world is unconditional love. The more you try to give it away, the more you get it back. At an individual level, it’s important to make sure that for the people that count to you, you count to them.
• You like people who are generous, go out of their way, straight shooters.
• The philosophy either takes immediately or it doesn’t at all. The reason gets down to temperament. People want to make money fast, but it doesn’t happen that way.
• There is always some introduction of moral hazard when government decides to act in favor of the common good versus letting someone fail. I would be disinclined to second guess the Fed, they have more information and are trying to do what’s right.
• Tell me who your heroes are and I’ll tell you how you’ll turn out to be.
• What we are seeing is a huge repricing and evaluation of risk, correcting for problems of the past. I don’t know of good credit propositions that are going unfulfilled. There’s lots of cheap credit for sensible deals, which I don’t define as anything that happened over the last 12, 18 months. Comparatively, this is not a credit crunch. In 1982 the prime rate was 22%.
• We’ve made lots of mistakes, but they don’t bother me. We are in the business of making many decisions and there are bound to be mistakes.
• It just doesn’t pay to dwell on the bad things. Finding the right spouse is 90% of it. If you are lucky on health and lucky on your spouse, you are a long way home.
• I recommend an index fund for these sovereign wealth funds. It gives them exposure to the US market, but they won’t get taken by salespeople with bad deals.
• I don’t think there is much being overlooked now, but I’m forced to look at big things. In 1951, I used Moody’s and S&P manuals as my sources of information. I went through them page by page.
• It’s also important to avoid managers who use leverage. It’s the reason that investors with 160 IQs flame out.
• Behaving decent is a large part of it. I tried to be useful and visible. I gave him stock tips and kept up with him. Almost always good things come from good behavior. It’s good to have a willingness to pitch in when you aren’t going to get credit for it.
• I just naturally want to do things that make sense. I don’t care what other rich people are doing. I don’t want a 405 foot boat just because someone else has a 400 foot boat.
• My wife was responsible for bringing up the children. In my own life I did virtually no social functions or meetings that I didn’t want to do. I’ve not seen many males having to make tough choices. But women are the ones who have tough situations.