Top 50 Daniel Pecaut Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “The best protection against inflation, according to Buffett, is your own earning power. If you constantly increase your earning power, you’ll be sure to get your share of the economic pie. The next best thing is to own wonderful businesses, especially those that have low capital requirements.”

— Daniel Pecaut

2. “On the Ideal Business – Buffett: “Something that costs a penny, sells for a dollar and is habit forming.”

— Daniel Pecaut

3. “As Munger put it, “Basically, we’re a hedgehog that knows one big thing. If you generate float at 3% per annum and buy businesses that earn 13% per annum with the proceeds of that float, we have figured out that’s a pretty good position to be in.”

— Daniel Pecaut

4. “Buffett continued, saying that MPT has no utility. It is elaborate with lots of little Greek letters to make you feel you are in the big leagues. The.”

— Daniel Pecaut

5. “It is much easier to pick the relative strength of Coca-Cola than it is to pick a winner in software.”

— Daniel Pecaut

6. “Buffett wanted to make sure that Nebraska got their sales tax. He was adamant about making sure that Berkshire paid – not more taxes than it had to, but the taxes that it was responsible for.”

— Daniel Pecaut

7. “Yet he knew that stocks would be better than bonds or cash over the long run.”

— Daniel Pecaut

8. “After you have enough for daily life, all that matters is your health and those you love.”

— Daniel Pecaut

9. “Ben Franklin’s advice: “Keep your eyes wide open before marriage and half shut thereafter.”

— Daniel Pecaut

10. “While reading, you may wonder, If Berkshire got out of the market, shouldn’t I do the same? or If Berkshire bought it, should I buy it too? Buffett and Munger are clear in their advice – people should learn from them and model their advice rather than copy their behavior. The main reason is this: Unless you find yourself in the enviable position that Berkshire operates in, you would do well not to copy its moves.”

— Daniel Pecaut

11. “Buffett observed that they do have filters. A key one is whether they have a good idea of how the business is going to do over the next five or 10 years.”

— Daniel Pecaut

12. “Warren recommended doing what turns you on. Munger agreed, saying he’d never done anything really well that he didn’t like to do.”

— Daniel Pecaut

13. “One ratio that Buffett is known to track is the total market cap to GDP. Recently, it was at 125%, which is a level approached in 1999 during the Internet bubble. Another.”

— Daniel Pecaut

14. “The valuation picture is very much affected by our zero-based interest rate structure. Clearly, stocks are worth far more when government bonds yield 1% than when they yield 5%.”

— Daniel Pecaut

15. “If investors only had to study the past, the richest people would be librarians.”

— Daniel Pecaut

16. “The danger of relying on historical statistics or formulas is that you end up betting on a 14-year-old horse with a great record but is now ready for the glue factory.”

— Daniel Pecaut

17. “Buffett also shared some of his classic bits of wisdom about growing wealth. Spend less than what you make. Know and stay within your circle of competence. The only businesses that matter are the ones you put your money in. Keep learning over time. Don’t lose. Insist on a margin of safety.”

— Daniel Pecaut

18. “Buffett explained that buying a business is much like buying a bond with no maturity and with a blank coupon. You must write in the coupon, and the accuracy of that coupon is the essence of intelligent investing. If you cannot guess the coupon with any accuracy, then do not invest in the business.”

— Daniel Pecaut

19. “Buffett emphasized that the ability to generate cash and reinvest is critical. He noted that it is the ability to generate cash that gives Berkshire its value.”

— Daniel Pecaut

20. “Nevertheless, their dishonesty upset Buffett. They were trying to chisel him out of 12.5 cents per share. So Buffett went the other way and started buying increasingly more shares of Berkshire until he took control. He then booted out the guy who had tried to chisel him out. In 1964, Warren Buffett took control of that small New England textile firm, and it became his new base for making investments.”

— Daniel Pecaut

21. “We’d buy great businesses with excellent management at a fair to bargain price and leave them alone.”

— Daniel Pecaut

22. “Buffett concluded that you can learn a lot about the durability of the economics of a business by observing price behavior.”

— Daniel Pecaut

23. “With imports exceeding exports, the world is doing the savings for us. China, with a much higher savings rate, will grow faster than us, and it probably needs to do so.”

— Daniel Pecaut

24. “Buffett also noted that book value is seldom meaningful in analyzing the value of a business. Book value simply records what was put into the business. The key to calculating value is determining what will come out of the business.”

— Daniel Pecaut

25. “In thinking about markets, it is important to remember that markets are there to serve you, not instruct you.”

— Daniel Pecaut

26. “Buffett noted that he likes to put a lot of money in things he feels strongly about. Diversification makes no sense for someone who knows what they are doing.”

— Daniel Pecaut

27. “As a value investor, your ideal situation is to find a company increasing its intrinsic value. Ideally, the company would be one with a declining stock price, thus creating an even better bargain as time unfolds. No one has employed these principles more effectively than Buffett and Munger.”

— Daniel Pecaut

28. “One of Buffett’s annual themes is the value of learning. He noted that life properly lived is learning, learning, learning all the time. He observed that being wrong is when he learns the most.”

— Daniel Pecaut

29. “Value is what a business is worth. Price is what you have to pay to get it.”

— Daniel Pecaut

30. “At the same time, he held firm that it doesn’t serve to make decisions in anger. He quoted Berkshire board member Tom Murphy: “You can always tell a man to go to hell tomorrow if it’s such a good idea.”

— Daniel Pecaut

31. “He recommended realism in defining one’s circle of competence and discipline to stay within the circle. He added that it helps to insulate yourself from popular opinions. You’re better off sitting and thinking.6 Coping.”

— Daniel Pecaut

32. “Munger claimed that it is because professors are so enamored by modern portfolio theory. For the man with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.”

— Daniel Pecaut

33. “Both Buffett and Munger are betting on higher, and maybe a lot higher inflation in the years to come.”

— Daniel Pecaut

34. “In modern portfolio theory, beta is used as a measure of the volatility and, thus, the risk of an investment. However, Buffett sees the use of beta as nonsense, emphatically stating, “Volatility is no measure of risk to us.”

— Daniel Pecaut

35. “In a fascinating digression, Buffett noted that “the fact that you are being obsoleted does not mean you should go into the successor business.” As an example, he explained that if you were a person of vision in the passenger train business in 1930, you might have seen the coming of the airplane. But the answer was not to get into the airline business, which is a terrible business. The answer was to get out of the passenger business altogether.”

— Daniel Pecaut

36. “So instead of copying, understand why they made the decisions they did. Then apply those insights to your own decisions and your own position.”

— Daniel Pecaut

37. “Buffett’s formula for happiness is simple: “Do what I like with people I like.” He noted that he learned early in life that his favorite employer was himself. It avoids aggravation.”

— Daniel Pecaut

38. “At their best, conglomerates enable the tax efficient transfer of cash from businesses that cannot use the money intelligently to those that can. Berkshire is a very rational conglomerate.”

— Daniel Pecaut

39. “Every year Buffett explains that he wants Berkshire to have great long-term shareholders and that splitting the stock would only work against that.”

— Daniel Pecaut

40. “The key to calculating value is determining what will come out of the business.”

— Daniel Pecaut

41. “For his successor, Buffett emphasized that proven capital allocation abilities would be the key.”

— Daniel Pecaut

42. “What matters most to him are micro factors, as opposed to the macro factors that so often get all the attention. He loves to know all the details of a business.”

— Daniel Pecaut

43. “With artificial intelligence, Buffett observed that more change will be coming. Almost certainly it will cause less employment in certain areas while being good for society overall.”

— Daniel Pecaut

44. “The moat represents a barrier to competition and could be low production costs, a trademark, or an advantage of scale or technology.”

— Daniel Pecaut

45. “Buffett believes that real risk comes from the nature of certain kinds of businesses, by the simple economics of the business and from not knowing what you’re doing. If you understand the economics and you know the people, then you’re not taking much risk. For.”

— Daniel Pecaut

46. “Buffett pointed out that when the investment tide goes out, you will see who has been swimming naked.”

— Daniel Pecaut

47. “Buffett chimed in that running a budget deficit of 10% of GDP is not sustainable.”

— Daniel Pecaut

48. “The idea of finding talented people to do what they do best is one of Buffett’s driving principles.”

— Daniel Pecaut

49. “Diversification is a protection against ignorance, a confession that you do not know the businesses you own.”

— Daniel Pecaut

50. “He said he doesn’t really care whether they’re buying into raw-material-intensive businesses, people-intensive businesses or capital-intensive businesses. The key is to understand a company’s costs and why it’s got a sustainable edge against its competitors.”

— Daniel Pecaut