‘Warren Buffett is actually the first finfluencer’

Tens of thousands of investors come every year in the spring to the shareholders’ meeting of Berkshire Hathaway, the investment vehicle of Warren Buffett. In a stadium in Omaha, Nebraska, they listen – among other things – to Buffett’s hours of speeches about his many investment decisions. Fans and shareholders are on his lips, because the multi -billionaire built a legendary status in six decades at the helm of Berkshire Hathaway.

Few investors are as successful and as famous as Buffett (94). In sixty years he built a small textile factory into a conglomerate with a market value of more than 1,000 billion dollars. His trademark, in short: hypes distrust, understanding a company to the bottom and at the right time step in for the really long term: rather ten years than ten months.

It was therefore a shock for fans last weekend, when Buffett announced his pension at the annual meeting of Berkshire Hathaway. Guru Buffett is supported by investors around the world. The financial one -liners of the caught American are spread across the internet as the spells of an old philosopher – but then a capitalist, not Confucian.

What makes Buffett so special, according to investors? What lessons do they draw from his numerous statements?

Ryan van der Veer (24) | Student Technical Public Administration ‘It is unique that Buffett reveals so much of his strategy’

‘I started investing at the age of eighteen, I opened an account at the same time as a friend. In the beginning you are still finding out how it works, collecting all the puzzle pieces. ” Buffett became an inspiration in this.

« The internet is full of Buffett oneliners, but often what he means is lost. His dominant philosophy is that it takes a lot of time and effort to do a good investment. He also reads throughout the day. Buffett buys few different shares, but he does a lot of his own research, instead of following the market trends.

« I am now selective and do a thorough investigation if I want to have shares in something. That also means actively going to shareholders’ meetings and keeping an eye on how a company is doing. ‘Put all your eggs in one basket (siege in one company), but keep a close eye on that basket’ is a well -known Buffett statement. So make sure you have in your thorough detail what you have in your in thorough detail.” ”” ””

Young, starting investors can learn from Buffett’s advice, Van der Veer thinks. « YouTube is full of finfluencers (financial influencers) who claim to know how you can quickly get rich with investing. It is tempting to kick in there. Buffett’s philosophy revolves around the long term. I get from my favorite quote that you should not lose a lot of money, no matter how well you have done it in the past.

« Buffet is actually the first finfluencer, because it is unique that he explains so much of his strategy and has managed to collect such a large crowd of followers. »

Martine Hafkamp (57) | Director Fintessa Asset Management‘There are always hypes on the stock exchange and they always turn out badly’

« Buffett also says: » My ideal holding period for a stock portfolio is forever.  » In it his assets managers like me are the same as he, even though I invest for others, not for myself. I never invest in companies that have made less than a cent profit, or companies where it still has to be seen whether the business model will work. There are always hypes on the stock exchange and they always turn out badly. That is also something that Buffett stands for: ‘you only have to invest in things that you understand’. I manage a portfolio for clients and I have to be able to explain what the investments are about.

« If you just keep your shares for a very long time, such as Buffett, then dividend becomes the most important thing. » Then a shareholder mainly earns from the profit of a company, instead of its stock market value in the share sales. « Buffett was laughed at in his face during the Dotcomboom, » when internet companies came up at lightning speed in the nineties, « because it had passed him. He was only in Apple. But during that ‘bubble’ it was thought that you could buy everything that had to do with the internet – that was of course not you. Many young internet companies did not have had a solid action plan and when the bubble burst around the turn of the century, many companies went bankrupt and evaporated the value of the shares. « Buffett has proven that great successes can be achieved without getting along in that kind of bubbles. If it suddenly gets less on the stock market, it turns out that you are a real investor or panic because you don’t know what you have invested. That is another statement by Buffett: » If the water sinks, you see who swims without swimming trunks. «  » « 

Harm Vogel (28) | Hobby investor‘Buffett does not work for the money, but for the game of investing itself’

‘Many people invest to make money, not Buffett. He does it for the game of investing himself. That is why I think it is so difficult for investors to imitate Buffett. He does not have an expensive car, not a big house, does not retire early. He has quite a stoic, sober lifestyle and keeps his money ‘in the market’. I am not saying that I am a kind of buffett, but I am satisfied with what I have and started in 2020 for investing itself, because it is about the passion for it, and not earning the money. Some people do it to retire early, but that is strange, because then you actually do something that you are not happy with at that moment. ”

“Investing is always much more difficult to present than it is. That is why my favorite statement also makes sense that you do not have to be very intelligent to invest successfully, but must have the right character. That is also applicable to the consequences of the American trading rates now. The market goes up and down, but if you just have no trust in a good quality, and that makes nothing to it. Always better.

Yet some tips from Buffett on paper are very straightforward, but in practice it is more difficult, Vogel notes. « For his strategy you really need a lot of patience, not everyone has that. Sometimes you have to wait for five years for your chance. Then it also requires a lot of guts to go full at the right time. That is not just possible, you have to learn that. »

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