Warren Buffett: When to Buy Stocks
Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger break down exactly what creates buying opportunities: other people doing dumb things, and at a scale that simply wasn't possible decades ago.
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What Warren Buffett said
Written from the verified transcript and checked against it. Every figure links to the moment it was said.
Warren Buffett said opportunities arise from others' mistakes, and the ease of raising money has increased the number of large, dumb actions, enriching intermediaries like underwriters and lawyers. He argued that investing has shifted toward selling ideas rather than outperforming, and that small investors have greater opportunities than large ones like Berkshire. He noted Berkshire holds $335 billion in treasuries, receives about $40 billion annually, and prefers to stay opportunistic rather than fully invested. He disagreed with Charlie Munger's gloom, citing a recent purchase of over $3 billion in a mispriced Treasury bill. Buffett dismissed short-term market predictions as valueless, emphasized the long-term uptrend, and predicted that attractive investment opportunities will arise, possibly within five years, though not tomorrow. He also mentioned that passive investors can do well with simple, long-term investments.
Key takeaways
Berkshire holds $335 billion in treasuries and gets about $40 billion annually, preferring to stay opportunistic.
Buffett bought over $3 billion of a mispriced Treasury bill recently, citing short-term market inefficiencies.
Buffett believes small investors have greater opportunities than large funds like Berkshire.
Buffett dismissed short-term market predictions as having no value, focusing on 5-20 year horizons.
What gives you opportunities is other people doing dumb things. And it's that, and I would say that, well, the 58 years we've been running Berkshire, I would say there's been a great increase in the number of people doing dumb things, and they do big dumb things. And the reason they do it, to some extent, is because they can get money from other people so much easier than when we started. So you could start 10 or 15 dumb insurance companies in the last 10 years, and you could become rich if you were adept at it, whether the business succeeded or not. And the underwriters got paid, and the lawyers got paid, and that creates... if that's done on a large scale, which it couldn't be done, what, 58 years ago, you couldn't get the money to do some of the dumb things that we wanted to do, fortunately. And so I don't... I think that investing has disappeared so much from this huge capitalistic market that anybody can play in, but that the big money is in selling other people ideas that isn't outperforming, in outperforming. And I think that... I think if you don't run too much money, which we do, but if you're running small amounts of money, I think the opportunities will be greater. But then Charlie and I have always differed on this subject. He likes to tell me how gloomy the world is, and I like to tell him we'll find something. And so far we've both been kind of right.
Charlie, wouldn't you, will you budge at all or not?
There is so much money now in the hands of so many smart people, all trying to outsmart one another and outpromote one another and getting more money out of other people. And it's a radically different world from the world we started in. And I suppose it will have its opportunities, but it's also going to have some unpleasant episodes.
But they're trying to outsmart each other in arenas that you don't have to play. I mean, if you look at that government bond market, if you look at the Treasury bill market, I mean, you've got this one bill that's out of line with the others. We bought over three billion of them the other day. And but those are people... the world is overwhelmingly short-term focused, and if you go to an investor relations call, they're all trying to figure out how to fill out a sheet to show the earnings for the year, and the management is interested in feeding them expectations that will slightly be beaten. I mean, that is a world that's made to order for anybody that's trying to think about what you do that should work over five or 10 or 20 years. And I just think that I would love to be born today and go out with not too much money and hopefully turn it into a lot of money. But and Charlie would too, actually. He just like... he would find something to do. I will just guarantee you. And it wouldn't be exactly the same as before, but he would have a big, big, big pile.
Buffett, W. (2026, October 7). Warren Buffett: When to Buy Stocks [Interview transcript]. Cris D. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/3000513/
MLA
Warren Buffett. "Warren Buffett: When to Buy Stocks." Cris D, 7 Oct. 2026. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/3000513/.
BibTeX
@misc{buffett2026_3000513,
author = {Warren Buffett},
title = {Warren Buffett: When to Buy Stocks},
howpublished = {Interview transcript, Cris D. CEOInterviews.AI},
year = {2026},
month = {oct},
url = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/3000513/},
note = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}
