You should be unconcerned about short-term price action when you own the securities directly, just as you were unconcerned when you owned them indirectly through BPL. I think about them as businesses, not "stocks", and if the business does all right over the long term, so will the stock.

Does the business have a consistent operating history?

Read 500 pages every day. That's how knowledge works. It builds up like compound interest.

In a bull market, one must avoid the error of the preening duck that quacks boastfully after a torrential rainstorm, thinking that its paddling skills have caused it to rise in the world. A right-thinking duck would instead compare its position after the downpour to that of the other ducks on the pond.

In other words, the percentage change in book value in any given year is likely to be reasonably close to that year's change in intrinsic value.

He must never forget Charlie's plea: Tell me where I'm going to die, so I'll never go there.

I mean [Franklin Delano] Roosevelt didn't - you know, when he came in, he didn't print any money.