Warren Buffett Return Quotations

Activity is the enemy of investment returns.

The best business returns are usually achieved by companies that are doing something quite similar today to what they were doing five or ten years ago.

Investors, of course, can, by their own behavior make stock ownership highly risky. And many do. Active trading, attempts to "time" market movements, inadequate diversification, the payment of high and unnecessary fees to managers and advisors, and the use of borrowed money can destroy the decent returns that a life-long owner of equities would otherwise enjoy. Indeed, borrowed money has no place in the investor's tool kit.

As an investor with small capital, one should prefer businesses that have high returns on capital and that require little incremental investment to grow.

The ideal business is one that earns very high returns on capital and that keeps using lots of capital at those high returns. That becomes a compounding machine.

Returns decrease as motion increases.

Focus on return on equity, not earnings per share.