The Warren Buffett Blog

By Mattathias Schwartz

The man sits alone in a room, on the fourteenth floor of a gray building. The man’s suit, his hair, the sky through the window, and the rows of figures sliding across the abacus of his mind—these too are gray, though each gray is of a different value. Against the wall stand rows of files containing data from the fifty-odd years of solitary room–sitting. The man drinks cola. He reads the paper. Every so often the phone rings and the man answers. Usually the answer is “no.” Long ago the man concluded that such quietude was optimal for making money. “Inactivity strikes us as intelligent behavior,” he once wrote. By “intelligent,” he meant “profitable.”

Complete Article (via scribd)

Warren Buffett believes his best deals during the economy’s biggest belly flop since the Crash of 1929 may well turn out to be the ones he didn’t do.

Mr. Buffett slammed the door on one opportunity after another during the most harrowing stretch of his storied career. That impulse, he says, left him with the financial firepower he needed last month to strike the biggest deal he has ever done — Berkshire Hathaway Inc.’s $26.3 billion purchase of railroad Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp.

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As a new year approaches, it is customary for journalists to make predictions about the future.

In keeping with Buffett’s long-term way of looking at things, Warren Buffett Watch offers eight predictions that are intentionally on the ‘timeless’ side of the prognostication spectrum.

In keeping with what’s becoming a holiday tradition, they are the same set of predictions we’ve offered for the past two years.  We still stand by them.

With that in mind, here are Warren Buffett Watch’s ‘timeless’ predictions.

1. Recessions can’t be avoided forever.
2. We’ll survive current and future recessions just as we’ve survived past problems.
3. Recessions will create opportunities.
4. All stocks won’t be cheap.
5. The crowd will make mistakes.
6. Investors will mistakenly think falling stock prices are bad
7. Good times will prompt bad decisions.
8. There will be more dancing at another wild party followed by another painful hangover

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