After nearly making a terrible mistake not buying See's, we've made this mistake many times. We are apparently slow learners. These opportunity costs don't show up on financial statements, but have cost us many billions.

You can hire your advisor and then just apply a windage factor, like I used to do when I was a rifle shooter. I'd just adjust for so many miles an hour wind. Or you can learn the basic elements of your advisor's trade. You don't have to learn very much, by the way, because if you learn just a little then you can make him explain why he's right.

We may well have a competitive advantage buying decent businesses at decent prices. But they won't be fabulous businesses and fabulous prices. There's too much competition and money out there, with many buyout specialists.

Avoid working directly under somebody you don't admire and don't want to be like.

When we were young, there weren't very many smart people in the investment world. You should have seen the people in the bank trust departments. Now, there are armies of smart people at private investment funds, etc . If there were a crisis now, there would be a lot more people with a lot of money ready to take advantage.

You're not going to get very far in life based on what you already know. You're going to advance in life by what you're going to learn after you leave here.

We have the same problem as everyone else: It's very hard to predict the future.