A chat with Warren
Warren Buffett was on CNBC’s On the Money program over the weekend, and we thought you might be interested in his very latest thoughts…Following is the unofficial transcript of the interview with Billionaire investor Warren Buffett and CNBC’s Becky Quick. The full transcript can be found here.
Becky Quick: He’s the man that many call America’s greatest investor. An oracle, Warren Buffett is here right on set with us and Warren, thank you so much for joining us today.
Warren Buffett: fun to be here.
Quick: So when we have you here, we have a lot of people who are at home watching the stock market who have gotten very nervous by some of the dips that they have seen recently. People starting to wonder if things are topping out. What advice would you give to those people who are sitting at home?
Buffett: Well I have no idea what the stock market is going to do tomorrow, or next week, or next month, or next year. I do know it is going to be higher ten years from now. And if you own your stocks as an investment, just like you would own an apartment house or a farm or anything, look at them as a business. And you have a group of American businesses and you are going to own them for ten years, you’re going to do fine. And if you are going to try and buy and sell them based on news or you know, something your neighbor tells you or anything like that, you’re probably not going to do well. So find a good bunch of businesses and hold them.
Quick: And that is what you have been doing for decades and decades, and it has paid off.
Buffett: I’ve been doing it all my life, yeah. And you will not make money trying to buy and sell stocks daily or weekly.
Quick: You may not know exactly what is going to happen to the market tomorrow, but you do have a pretty good idea about what is happening in the economy. You know that through all of the companies.
Buffett: Sure.
Quick: From Burlington Northern, which is a very good read on the economy, to a company like American Express that you hold a big stake in. Where do you think we are headed?
Buffett: Well the economy, since the fall of 2009, that’s five years now, has been increasing at a pretty steady rate. People have gotten – periodically they got more enthused or more depressed about it. They talk about double dips, and all these sorts of things we’ve heard, but it has been a pretty steady increase. It doesn’t accelerate a lot, it doesn’t decelerate a lot. And what we see now is exactly what we have been seeing for five years. An increase not a rate that gets people all excited, but – and I think we will be seeing that a year from now.
Roger Montgomery is the Founder and Chairman of Montgomery Investment Management. Roger has over three decades of experience in funds management and related activities, including equities analysis, equity and derivatives strategy, trading and stockbroking. Prior to establishing Montgomery, Roger held positions at Ord Minnett Jardine Fleming, BT (Australia) Limited and Merrill Lynch.
This post was contributed by a representative of Montgomery Investment Management Pty Limited (AFSL No. 354564). The principal purpose of this post is to provide factual information and not provide financial product advice. Additionally, the information provided is not intended to provide any recommendation or opinion about any financial product. Any commentary and statements of opinion however may contain general advice only that is prepared without taking into account your personal objectives, financial circumstances or needs. Because of this, before acting on any of the information provided, you should always consider its appropriateness in light of your personal objectives, financial circumstances and needs and should consider seeking independent advice from a financial advisor if necessary before making any decisions. This post specifically excludes personal advice.
Luke
:
If you had one question for Mr Buffett, what would it be?
grant.westcott.7
:
As usual sage advice from the great man. The time to rush is when the house is on fire not when buying or selling shares in a business. I have to admit, even after 40 years of involvement in this wonderful would of investment I can still be inclined to be a bit “trigger happy” – I expect when I’m Charlie’s age I’ll be a bit better!
Thanks, Roger, for all the great articles and, of course, for getting Skaffold up and running. And please tell whoever was responsible for the new look Skaffold that it is such a pleasure to use (particularly with my tired old eyes!)
All the very best
Grant W
Chris B
:
Thanks for sharing this. This Montgomery website is possibly the best in Australia for value investing
Roger Montgomery
:
Thanks Chris!
Andrew Legget
:
Nothing really surprising in the interview with Warren, his Q&A’s at general meetings and shareholders letter are much better value in terms of education and insights than many of his TV interviews. Liked the discussion about newspapers, i know it is a terrible business but we got a good deal.
I think one thing Warren always does extremeley well is simplyfy investing. I am sure there are people out there that can do all sorts of really complex and wonderful computerised modelling but can’t read a financial statement. At the end of the day, all you are doing is buying a share of ownership in a company. If you are holding these investments over a long term then you can put away the complex models, just look at the quality of the business. Spotting quality businesses, is actually not that difficult of a thing to do either, especially in relation to products you use day in and day out.