Money & Investing
Money, investing, wealth, and the economics of business.
I mean, I do think at a certain point you've made enough money.
SourceRemarks by the President on Wall Street Reform in Quincy, Illinois (28 April 2010) · via Wikiquote
Markets are constantly in a state of uncertainty and flux and money is made by discounting the obvious and betting on the unexpected.
SourceAs quoted in "Great Money Minds" by Chris Stallman at TeenAnalyst.com (5 May 2005) · via Wikiquote
Stock market bubbles don't grow out of thin air. They have a solid basis in reality, but reality as distorted by a misconception.
SourceBuzzFlash interview (2004) · via Wikiquote
Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder.
SourceLetter to Major-General Robert Howe · National Archives on Founders Online
avoid Gaming—This is a vice which is productive of every possible evil. equally injurious to the Morals & health of its votaries—It is the child of Avarice—the brother of inequity—& father of Mischief—It has been the Ruin of many worthy familys—the loss of many a mans honor—& the cause of Suicide.
SourceGeorge Washington to Bushrod Washington, 15 January 1783 · Mount Vernon Ladies' Association on George Washington's Mount Vernon
As a very important source of strength and security, cherish public credit. One method of preserving it is, to use it as sparingly as possible; avoiding occasions of expense by cultivating peace, but remembering also that timely disbursements to prepare for danger frequently prevent much greater disbursements to repel it; avoiding likewise the accumulation of debt, not only by shunning occasions of expense, but by vigorous exertions in time of peace to discharge the debts, which unavoidable wars may have occasioned, not ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burthen, which we ourselves ought to bear.
SourceFarewell Address · Mount Vernon Ladies' Association on George Washington's Mount Vernon
To contract new debts is not the way to pay old ones.
SourceLetter to James Welch · National Archives on Founders Online
A business absolutely devoted to service will have only one worry about profits. They will be embarrassingly large.
SourceMy Life and Work (1922) · via Wikiquote
My philosophy is that if I have any money I invest it in new ventures and not have it sitting around.
SourceFrom his interview in The Sunday Mirror, 16th January 2000 · via Wikiquote
Innovation has nothing to do with how many R & D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R & D. It's not about money. It's about the people you have, how you're led, and how much you get it.
SourceAs quoted in Fortune (9 November 1998); also quoted in "TIME digital 50" in TIME digital archive (1999) · via Wikiquote
Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.
Source2008 Chairman's Letter · via Wikiquote
Our favorite holding period is forever.
Source1988 Chairman's Letter · via Wikiquote
Value is what you get.
Source2008 Chairman's Letter · via Wikiquote
Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.
I can make more generals, but horses cost money.
Money is not the only answer, but it makes a difference.
Contrary to the claims of some of my critics and some of the editorial pages, I am an ardent believer in the free market.
We didn't become the most prosperous country in the world just by rewarding greed and recklessness. We didn't come this far by letting the special interests run wild. We didn't do it just by gambling and chasing paper profits on Wall Street. We built this country by making things, by producing goods we could sell.
Money has no utility to me beyond a certain point.
Some people, through luck and skill, end up with a lot of assets. If you're good at kicking a ball, writing software, investing in stocks, it pays extremely well.
I think any statement about stock prices is always suspect unless it's made by Warren Buffett.
I actually thought that it would be a little confusing during the same period of your life to be in one meeting when you're trying to make money, and then go to another meeting where you're giving it away. I mean is it gonna erode your ability, you know, to make money? Are you gonna somehow get confused about what you're trying to do?
Bitcoin is mostly about anonymous transactions, and I don't think over time that's a good way to go. I'm a huge believe in digital currency... but doing it on an anonymous basis I think that leads to some abuses, so I'm not involved in Bitcoin.
Well I think any author or musician is anxious to have legitimate sales of their products, partly so they're rewarded for their success, partly so they can go on and do new things.
If people want capital gains taxed more like the highest rate on income, that's a good discussion. Maybe that's the way to help close the deficit.
I can understand wanting to have millions of dollars; there's a certain freedom, meaningful freedom, that comes with that.
A first-generation fortune is the most likely to be given away, but once a fortune is inherited it's less likely that a very high percentage will go back to society.
I'm an investor in a number of biotech companies, partly because of my incredible enthusiasm for the great innovations they will bring.
I believe the returns on investment in the poor are just as exciting as successes achieved in the business arena, and they are even more meaningful!
If I hadn't given my money away, I'd have had more than anyone else on the planet.
You can't have a rigid view that all new taxes are evil.
Capitalism has shortfalls. It doesn't necessarily take care of the poor, and it underfunds innovation, so we have to offset that.
There's 20 companies that I have investments in - some batteries, some solar-thermal, one big nuclear thing. We need hundreds and hundreds of companies like that, so that in a 20-year time frame we really are starting to change the energy infrastructure.
There is no doubt that as an economy grows in a great way like India has, that you have to step back and change your tax systems, because you start to get more disparities of wealth.
We have to find a way to make the aspects of capitalism that serve wealthier people serve poorer people as well.
I always invest my own money in the companies that I create. I don't believe in the whole thing of just using other people's money. I don't think that's right. I'm not going to ask other people to invest in something if I'm not prepared to do so myself.
The reality is gas prices should be much more expensive then they are because we're not incorporating the true damage to the environment and the hidden costs of mining oil and transporting it to the U.S. Whenever you have an unpriced externality, you have a bit of a market failure, to the degree that eternality remains unpriced.
You need to be in the position where it is the cost of the fuel that actually matters and not the cost of building the rocket in the first place.
The reason we should do a carbon tax is because it's the right thing to do. It's economics 101, elementary stuff.
I've never been that much of a money guy. I'm more of a film guy, and most of the money I've made is in defense of trying to keep creative control of my movies.
The financial markets generally are unpredictable. So that one has to have different scenarios... The idea that you can actually predict what's going to happen contradicts my way of looking at the market.
The reality is that financial markets are self-destabilizing; occasionally they tend toward disequilibrium, not equilibrium.
I put forward a pretty general theory that financial markets are intrinsically unstable. That we really have a false picture when we think about markets tending towards equilibrium.
If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability.
A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.
There is one rule for the industrialist and that is: Make the best quality of goods possible at the lowest cost possible, paying the highest wages possible.
Wealth, like happiness, is never attained when sought after directly. It comes as a by-product of providing a useful service.
The highest use of capital is not to make more money, but to make money do more for the betterment of life.
Money is like an arm or leg - use it or lose it.
Speculation is only a word covering the making of money out of the manipulation of prices, instead of supplying goods and services.
Spending money is much more difficult than making money.
My job is making money, helping other people make money. I am spending money, trying to make sure more people get rich, because you cannot spend a lot of money, right? So my job is spending money, helping others. This is a headache.
IBM, Microsoft, the profit they made was larger than the top four banks in China put together... But where did the money go?
Today the financial market is no good, but the money is there.
People say, 'Well you know the economy's bad, so China consumption will be low. No, totally different. You Americans love to spend tomorrow's money, and other people's money maybe... We Chinese love to save money.
China's government is so strong on investment, so strong on exporting, but they're too weak on domestic consumption.
I don't care about revenues.
I even don't dare to watch our stock price, because this is what other people think who you are. I dare not watch it. I think, let the market take care of themselves; we should take care of the business.
China is still the fastest growing economy in the world, but we need to learn how to use money in a better way, and it's about quality, not quantity.
It's impossible for China to keep 10 to 15% growth annually. The economy needed to slow down, and we have to learn to slow down.
We expect all our businesses to have a positive impact on our top and bottom lines. Profitability is very important to us or we wouldn't be in this business.
Percentage margins don't matter. What matters always is dollar margins: the actual dollar amount. Companies are valued not on their percentage margins, but on how many dollars they actually make, and a multiple of that.
The one thing that offends me the most is when I walk by a bank and see ads trying to convince people to take out second mortgages on their home so they can go on vacation. That's approaching evil.
Market leadership can translate directly to higher revenue, higher profitability, greater capital velocity, and correspondingly stronger returns on invested capital.
Over time, our emerging high-usage products will likely generate significant new revenue streams for Google as well as for our partners, just as search does today.
I don't care what anyone says. Being rich is a good thing.
Being rich is a good thing. Not just in the obvious sense of benefitting you and your family, but in the broader sense. Profits are not a zero sum game. The more you make, the more of a financial impact you can have.
Money is a scoreboard where you can rank how you're doing against other people.
The number-one job of the hedge-fund manager is not to make sure that you can retire with a smile on your face - it's for him to retire with a smile on his face.
Anyone who says he is an expert in the market is lying to you. There is no such thing.
I'm not a fan of giving to charities. I have a few I support, but the overhead and inefficiencies really bother me. Instead, I pay people's bills and help solve problems.
My guiding principle and motivation was that I wanted to retire by the time I turned 35. There actually are two books that I bought and still have - Paul Terhost's 'Cashing In On the American Dream: How to Retire at 35' and Andrew Tobias's 'The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need' - that were my personal financial road map.
I was born to sell it as a kid. I think it's partially innate, and partly it's because my parents were always very clear: if I needed anything that wasn't a necessity, I was going to have to save my money and buy it myself. That meant not only did I have to buy basketball shoes, but I had to figure out how to pay for college as well.
But we have to ask ourselves, what's the purpose of the stock market? It's supposed to be a source of capital for growing business. It's lost that purpose.
I look at my annual budgets for everything and anything, and I look to see where I can save the most money on those items. Saving 30% to 50% buying in bulk - replenishable items from toothpaste to soup, or whatever I use a lot of - is the best guaranteed return on investment you can get anywhere.
I placed too much importance on comparing how much I had to others early on. Then I started realizing time was a far more valuable asset. When I started using money to create more time, I appreciated both more.
Liquidity is a good proxy for relative net worth. You can't lie about cash, stocks, and bond values.
Go out there and get rich. Get so obnoxiously rich that when that tax bill comes, your first thought will be to choke on how big a check you have to write.
We are a mission-driven company. In order to do this, we have to build a great team. And in order to do that, you need people to know they can make a bunch of money. So we need a business model to make a lot of money.
We have these services that people love and that are drivers of data usage... and we want to work this out, so that way, it's a profitable model for our partners.
When most people ask about a business growing, what they really mean is growing revenue, not just growing the number of people using a service. Traditional businesses would view people using your service that you don't make money from as a cost.
Building a mission and building a business go hand in hand. The primary thing that excites me is the mission. But we have always had a healthy understanding that we need to do both.
In any investment, you expect to have fun and make money.
Money is worth nothing if it can't buy you the opportunity to love more.
To me, the money is - it's certainly a wonderful thing. But it is in direct proportion to how you're able to bless yourself and bless others with it.
The real key to making money in stocks is not to get scared out of them.
Go for a business that any idiot can run - because sooner or later, any idiot probably is going to run it.
You get recessions, you have stock market declines. If you don't understand that's going to happen, then you're not ready, you won't do well in the markets.
Don't bottom fish.
Everyone has the brainpower to follow the stock market. If you made it through fifth-grade math, you can do it.
I think you have to learn that there's a company behind every stock, and that there's only one real reason why stocks go up. Companies go from doing poorly to doing well or small companies grow to large companies.
Well, I think the secret is if you have a lot of stocks, some will do mediocre, some will do okay, and if one of two of 'em go up big time, you produce a fabulous result. And I think that's the promise to some people.
When stocks are attractive, you buy them. Sure, they can go lower. I've bought stocks at $12 that went to $2, but then they later went to $30. You just don't know when you can find the bottom.
So while I was in college I did a little study on the freight industry, the air freight industry. And I looked at this company called Flying Tiger. And I actually put a thousand dollars in it and I remember I thought this air cargo was going to be a thing of the future.
I've found that when the market's going down and you buy funds wisely, at some point in the future you will be happy. You won't get there by reading 'Now is the time to buy.'
I don't go near the money and the money doesn't go near me.
Although it's easy to forget sometimes, a share is not a lottery ticket... it's part-ownership of a business.
But my system for over 30 years has been this: When stocks are attractive, you buy them. Sure, they can go lower. I've bought stocks at $12 that went to $2, but then they later went to $30.
I've found that when the market's going down and you buy funds wisely, at some point in the future you will be happy.
In the summer of 1990, I was buying stocks and I was probably three or four months early there. But we had a great rally in 1991.
If you want to be a Millionaire, start with a billion dollars and launch a new airline.
Well, I think that there's a very thin dividing line between success and failure. And I think if you start a business without financial backing, you're likely to go the wrong side of that dividing line.
It's a common misconception that money is every entrepreneur's metric for success. It's not, and nor should it be.
It's rare for a startup to make money immediately, so you need to make sure that you have enough saved or that you have another income stream that can support you.
For a successful entrepreneur it can mean extreme wealth. But with extreme wealth comes extreme responsibility. And the responsibility for me is to invest in creating new businesses, create jobs, employ people, and to put money aside to tackle issues where we can make a difference.
I'm an athlete and I'm black, and a lot of black athletes go broke. I do not want to become a statistic, so maybe I overcompensate. But I'm paranoid. Oprah told me a long time ago, 'You sign every check. Never let anyone sign any checks.'
I think money is a wonderful thing because it enables you to do things. It enables you to invest in ideas that don't have a short-term payback.
Bottom line is, I didn't return to Apple to make a fortune. I've been very lucky in my life and already have one. When I was 25, my net worth was $100 million or so. I decided then that I wasn't going to let it ruin my life. There's no way you could ever spend it all, and I don't view wealth as something that validates my intelligence.
So when these people sell out, even though they get fabulously rich, they're gypping themselves out of one of the potentially most rewarding experiences of their unfolding lives. Without it, they may never know their values or how to keep their newfound wealth in perspective.
We've demonstrated a strong track record of being very disciplined with the use of our cash. We don't let it burn a hole in our pocket, we don't allow it to motivate us to do stupid acquisitions. And so I think that we'd like to continue to keep our powder dry, because we do feel that there are one or more strategic opportunities in the future.
Why pay a dollar for a bookmark? Why not use the dollar for a bookmark?
I'm not really interested in making money.
Money to me is not a factor in my life.
Because television doesn't offer the kind of budget that a movie offers, you've got to be a little more careful where you spend the money to put the fiction in science.
Bloated budgets are ruining Hollywood - these pictures are squeezing all the other types of movies out of Hollywood. It's disastrous.
Waste is worse than loss. The time is coming when every person who lays claim to ability will keep the question of waste before him constantly. The scope of thrift is limitless.
We don't really look at the stock, you know? Because for us, it's about the long term. And so we're very much focused on long-term shareholder value but not the short-term kind of stuff.
The kind of investors we seek are long term because that's how we make our decisions.
I've never done work for money ever. If your choices are based on grosses and the film doesn't do well, what does that mean? It leaves you with nothing.
I'd say it's been my biggest problem all my life... it's money. It takes a lot of money to make these dreams come true.
You reach a point where you don't work for money.
It's far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price.
We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful.
Wall Street is the only place that people ride to in a Rolls Royce to get advice from those who take the subway.
Derivatives are financial weapons of mass destruction.
Only buy something that you'd be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for 10 years.
The investor of today does not profit from yesterday's growth.
When you combine ignorance and leverage, you get some pretty interesting results.
Wide diversification is only required when investors do not understand what they are doing.
Look at market fluctuations as your friend rather than your enemy; profit from folly rather than participate in it.
If a business does well, the stock eventually follows.
The first rule is not to lose. The second rule is not to forget the first rule.
Of the billionaires I have known, money just brings out the basic traits in them. If they were jerks before they had money, they are simply jerks with a billion dollars.
Today people who hold cash equivalents feel comfortable. They shouldn't. They have opted for a terrible long-term asset, one that pays virtually nothing and is certain to depreciate in value.
I never attempt to make money on the stock market. I buy on the assumption that they could close the market the next day and not reopen it for five years.
Why not invest your assets in the companies you really like? As Mae West said, 'Too much of a good thing can be wonderful'.
We believe that according the name 'investors' to institutions that trade actively is like calling someone who repeatedly engages in one-night stands a 'romantic.'
We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.
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