Are you looking for the best way to build wealth? Why not seek the advice of the world’s best investor?
Warren Buffett says that the best way to maximise your wealth is to focus on your career and to invest in index funds. You may find that surprising advice from a great investor, yet it does make a lot of sense.
If you’re devoting your free time towards trying to out-smart the market at the expense of building your career skills, you may want to re-think your strategy.
Devoting your free time to building your career skills has a much better pay off than devoting it towards trying to out-smart the market. This is the philosophy of Warren Buffett and we think its pretty hard to disagree.
At the Berkshire Hathaway shareholders’ meeting in 2006 a shareholder asked a question along the lines of “how should I study investing in order to build wealth in my spare time?”
Buffett replied that, for most people, the bulk of their income is going to come from earning power in their chosen profession. Therefore, from the standpoint of building wealth, free time is better spent sharpening one’s professional skills rather than studying investing.
Source: Soul Shelter, “Billionaire Lessons in Prosperity Living”, April 2, 2008
The following comments are excerpts from the Fortune Magazine article, “What Warren Thinks”, published April 14, 2008:
What advice would you give to someone who is not a professional investor? Where should they put their money?
Buffett: Well, if they’re not going to be an active investor – and very few should try to do that – then they should just stay with index funds. Any low-cost index fund. And they should buy it over time. They’re not going to be able to pick the right price and the right time. What they want to do is avoid the wrong price and wrong stock. You just make sure you own a piece of American business, and you don’t buy all at one time.
What should we say to investors now?
Buffett: The answer is you don’t want investors to think that what they read today is important in terms of their investment strategy. Their investment strategy should factor in that (a) if you knew what was going to happen in the economy, you still wouldn’t necessarily know what was going to happen in the stock market. And (b) they can’t pick stocks that are better than average. Stocks are a good thing to own over time. There’s only two things you can do wrong: You can buy the wrong ones, and you can buy or sell them at the wrong time. And the truth is you never need to sell them, basically. But they could buy a cross section of American industry, and if a cross section of American industry doesn’t work, certainly trying to pick the little beauties here and there isn’t going to work either. Then they just have to worry about getting greedy. You know, I always say you should get greedy when others are fearful and fearful when others are greedy. But that’s too much to expect. Of course, you shouldn’t get greedy when others get greedy and fearful when others get fearful. At a minimum, try to stay away from that.
But you’re still bullish about the U.S. for the long term?
Buffett: The American economy is going to do fine. But it won’t do fine every year and every week and every month. I mean, if you don’t believe that, forget about buying stocks anyway. But it stands to reason. I mean, we get more productive every year, you know. It’s a positive-sum game, long term. And the only way an investor can get killed is by high fees or by trying to outsmart the market.
Source: Fortune Magazine Article, “What Warren Thinks”, April 14, 2008.