Warren Buffett on When Patience Pays — And When It Doesn’t | Berkshire 2025

[Transcript]

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hi, Mr. Buffett. My name is Daniel and I’m from Tenafly, New Jersey. First of all, I just want to say how grateful I am for getting the opportunity to ask you a question. When it comes to your principles of investing, you often talk about how important it is to be patient. Has there ever been a situation in your investing career where breaking that principle and acting fast has benefited you? Thank you.

WARREN BUFFETT: Well, that's a good question. There are times when you have to act fast. In fact, we’ve made a great deal of money because we’re willing to act faster than anybody around. Jessica Pune, I think she's the stepdaughter of – step-granddaughter of Ben Rosner, a manager of ours.

In 1966, I got a call from a fellow named Phil Steinberg (PH) in New York. And he said, "I represent Mrs. Annenberg." And there were actually nine (seven) Annenberg sisters, I believe before Walter Annenberg came along as the son. But he said, "We have a business we’d like to sell you."

So I called Charlie up, and I got a few details, and it sounded very interesting. Charlie and I went back to the office of Will Phil Steinberg in New York, who was a marvellous guy. Never met him since. But he was handling things for Mrs. A. Simon, but her name was Annenberg. And her husband had been the partner of Ben Rosner, but he had died, and Ben got kind of tense about working with her.

And so he offered us this business at a bargain price – he offered us a business for $6 million. It had $2 million of cash, and another 2 million dollar piece of property in the 900 block of – what's the key street in Philadelphia down there – Market Street. And it was making $2 million a year pre tax, and the price was $6 million.

And Charlie and I went back to this place, and Ben Rosner was there. And he really – he was just upset about doing business with his partner’s widow. She was extremely wealthy. And he wasn’t enjoying it. And he was very nervous about selling it, and he said to me and Charlie, he said, "I’ll run this business for you until December 31st, and then I’m out of here."

And I got Charlie, we went down the hallway, and I said, "If this guy quits at the end of the year, you can throw away every book on psychology I've ever read." (Laughs) And so that began a wonderful – We bought the company and had a great relationship.

And did I know that morning when I got a phone call from Will Phil Steinberg that there was background about it? I've had a couple of times and that was one of them where people in the East felt that they had a stereotype, in their mind, of what people from the Midwest were like. And Ben had been married, his first marriage was to a woman from Iowa, and he just figured that anybody from the Midwest was okay.

And the trick when you do, you know, when you get in the business with somebody, and you get in a room with somebody like that, and they want to sell you something for $6 million, it's got 2 million of cash and a couple million of real estate, and is making $2 million a year, you don't want to be patient then.

You want to be patient and waiting to get the occasional call. My phone will ring sometime, you know, and that was something that, you know, wakes me up. (Laughs) I may be sleeping in there or something. You just never know when it’ll happen. And that’s what makes it fun.

So patience is a combination of patience and a willingness to do something that afternoon if it comes to you. You don’t want to be patient about acting on deals that make sense, and you don’t want to be very patient with people that are talking to you about things that will never happen. So it's not a constant asset, it's not a constant liability to be patient. Greg, you –

GREG ABEL: Well, Warren I just want to add, as you're being patient, I happen to know and I think that goes for Ajit also and all our managers, very patient when we're looking at opportunities and as you touched on, we want to act quickly but while we're being patient, never underestimate the amount of reading and work that's being done to be prepared to act quickly.

Cause we do know be at equities – but I would include a variety of private companies – when the opportunity presents itself we're ready to act, and that's a large part of being patient is using it to be prepared.

WARREN BUFFETT: Yeah, and of course it doesn’t come in anything like an even flow. I mean it’s the most uneven sort of activity you could get into. And the main thing is you have to be willing to hang up after 5 seconds and you have to be willing to say yes after 5 seconds.

GREG ABEL: Absolutely.

WARREN BUFFETT: And you can’t be filled with self-doubt in this business. You just forget it isn't going to work. Go to some other activity. But you also – I mean one of the great pleasures – it is the great pleasure actually in this business – is having people trust you.

And that's really the why, why work at 90 when you've got more money than anybody could count. You know if they started today and having machines they're helping him and everything else. (Laughs) It means nothing in terms of how you're going to live or how your children are going to live or anything else.

But both Charlie and I, we just enjoyed the fact that people trusted us. And they trusted us 60 years ago or 70 years ago in partnerships we had. And we never sought out professional investors to join our partnerships. Among all my partners, I never had a single institution – I never wanted an institution.

I wanted people and I didn’t want people who were sitting around having people presents to him every three months and tell what they wanted to hear and all that sort of thing. So – and that’s what we got, and that’s why we’ve got this group here today. So it's all worked out. (Laughs)

But that you don't want to be patient when things are going your way – when the time comes to act – you want to get it done that day.

Source: https://buffett.cnbc.com/2025-berkshire-hathaway-annual-meeting/

 

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