Warren Buffett is obviously one of the best investors ever, and truly, when I was doing my MBA and PhD studies,

I just read everything I could, not only on his tactics but on him specifically. What I like about Warren

Buffett is that he tells it like it is and keeps it very simple. Investing does not need to be complicated, but the

more that somebody tries to make it seem complicated, the more they're probably trying to trick you. So be

careful. If you want to invest like one of the best ever, here are four rules you need to follow. My name is

Nolan G. My students call me Professor G, and I made this channel to simplify investing. Rule number one is

to stick to businesses you understand. An old-fashioned belief that I can only expect to make money in things

that I understand. And when I say understand, I don't mean understand, you know, what the product does or anything

like that. I mean understand what the economics of the business are likely to look like 10 years from now or

20 years from now. I know in general what the economics of Wrigley chewing gum will look like 10 years from now; the

internet isn't going to change the way people chew gum; it isn't going to change which gum they chew. You know, if you own

the chewing gum market in a big way and you've got Doublemint, Spearmint, and Juicy Fruit—those brands will be there

10 years from now. So I can't pinpoint exactly what the numbers are going to look like for Wrigley, but I'm not going to

be way off if I try to look forward on something like that. Evaluating that company is within what I call my

circle of competence. I understand what they do; I understand the economics of it; I understand the competitive aspects of

the business, so he's saying that you need to identify what your circle of competence is and you need to stick to

it. If you know a lot about the athletic apparel market, then you're going to know all the intrinsic value and competitive

advantage of something like Nike versus Lululemon. People always ask me, "Should I invest in this crazy AI stock or should

I invest in cryptocurrency?" Well, if you're asking that, then you probably don't know as much about it as you

should, because if you did, you probably wouldn't be asking me if you should invest in it, because you'd understand it.

Defining your circle of competence is the most important aspect of investing. It's not how important, how large

your circle is; you don't have to be an expert on everything. But knowing where the perimeter of that circle is, what you

know and what you don't know, is important. And staying inside of it is all important. And if I don't understand something, but I get all

excited about it because my neighbors are talking about stocks going up and everything, they start fooling around

somewhere else eventually, I'll get creamed. And I should. So now, while you definitely need to stick to what you know, you also

need to be ready to pounce when the time is right. Next rule is all about taking advantage of golden opportunities.

Opportunities in life have to be seized. Uh, we don't do very many things, but when we get the chance to do something

something that's right and big, we've got to do it. And even to do it on a small

scale is just as big a mistake, almost, as not doing it at all. I mean, you've really got to, you've got to grab them when they

come, because they, you're not going to get 500 great opportunities even in my lifetime of 28 years. There's really only

There have been three amazing stock market opportunities: the dot-com crash, the global financial crisis, and the 2020 stock market crash. So, roughly once every 10 years...

Our mistakes are of omission, not commission. I mean, it's the things I knew enough to do,

they were within my circle of competence, and I was sucking my thumb. And that is really—those are the ones that hurt. They

don't show up anywhere. I probably cost Berkshire at least 5 billion dollars, for example, by sucking my thumb 20 years ago,

or close to it, when Fannie Mae was having some troubles and we could have bought the whole company for practically

nothing. And I don't worry about that if it's Microsoft because I don't know it, because Microsoft isn't in my circle of

competence. And so I don't have any reason to think I'm entitled to make

money out of Microsoft or out of cocoa beans or whatever. But I did know enough to understand Fannie Mae, and I blew it.

And that never shows up under conventional accounting, but the cost—I know the cost of it. I know I passed it up, and those are the big, big mistakes.

Warren Buffett says that you need to do a lot of research;

you need to know everything inside and out about what you're about to invest in, but more importantly, you need to take

and seize the opportunity as soon as you see it. Here's the analogy of baseball. Just like baseball, the perfect pitch

could either be one that's thrown right down the middle and you could hit it out of the park, or you could swing too late

and miss for a strike. Now, rule number three, and this is the one that made me the most amount of money, but first I

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professor at checkout. So the third rule from the Oracle of Omaha is literally the one that I've seen most of my

clients and most people, just in general, mess up the worst. I've had more clients tell me that they've lost out on

hundreds of thousands of dollars because of this one big mistake. It's seriously such a simple thing, but more than half

of investors mess this up every single day.  The 20th century was an unbelievable century for the United States. If you take the

whole hundred years, it ran up $180 for one; every $1,000 became $180,000. But 43

and three-quarter years—43 and 3/4 years—were those three big, huge bull markets, and 56 and a quarter years were periods of

stagnation, all in an economy that was doing fine. 56 and a quarter years net, the Dow was down a couple hundred points

during that period, and the other 43 and 3/4 years made up the rest of this move from 66 to 11,000 somewhere on the

Dallas, so how could it be that you could have a country that was doing better and better and better every

generation, was living better than the one that preceded it, but you had these huge changes, big gains a few times, long

periods of stagnation. Twenty years, I mean that's a long time to do nothing. The answer is that investors

behave in very human ways, which is they get very excited during bull markets and they look in the rearview mirror and

they say, 'I made money last year, I'm going to make more money this year, so this time I'll borrow,' or the neighbor

says, 'I wasn't in last year,' when that neighbor was dumber than I, 'I made a lot of money, so I'm going to go in this year.'

So they're always looking in the rearview mirror, and when they look in the rearview mirror and they see a lot of

money having been made in the last few years, they plow in and they just push and push and push on prices. And when

they look in the rearview mirror and they see no money having been made, they just say, 'This is a lousy place to be,' so they

don't care what's going on in the underlying business. And it's it's astounding, but that's that makes for a

huge opportunity, just a huge opportunity. You know, you will see things you won't believe in your lifetime in securities

markets. The country will do very well over time, but you will see these huge, huge waves. And then, and uh, if you can

stay objective throughout that, if you can detach yourself temperamentally from the crowd, you get very rich and you

won't have to be very bright. I mean, it I'm sure you are, but but you

know, it just it doesn't take brains, it takes temperament. It doesn't take brains, it takes temperament. Every year there's

A new headline or news story telling us why this is the worst year to be investing, and there's going to be a huge

dip, and you're going to lose all your money, and the S&P 500 is going to get

cut in half. This last year is because of the election and rising inflation. Analysts everywhere were saying, 'Brace

yourself for the biggest dip in the history of dips!' And all the while, we hit like 20 all-time highs this year.

Unfortunately, I know many people that took seven figures out of the market right before 2024 in anticipation of

what might happen, and they lost out on about a 30% gain. The S&P 500 went up 30%

or so in that time period. On $1 million, that's a total of $300,000 that they

missed out on by selling out. When in doubt, zoom out. Look at the S&P 500 full

chart and look at all the storms it's weathered in the last 90 years, and look how it's always gone right back up and

surpassed it. Keep your emotions to a minimum and stay the course. So this next rule, number four, is one of my

favorites. It's just so amazing to me that when the stock market's down, nobody wants to jump in, but when it's going up

and the prices are actually at their highest, that's when everybody's excited to jump into the market. So people didn't

like [stock ticker symbol] when it was $400 per share, but right now that it's up way over $500 per

share, people are buying it hand over fist. With this logic, it would be like going into a store and finding a hat

that you really, really like, but looking around and nobody else really wants this hat, and you ask the store owner how much

Is the hat and he says $30. You say you'll think about it, and you come back another day, come back a month later and

now a bunch of people want this hat, and a store owner says, okay, cool, it's $50 now. And for some reason, because other

people want it and because it's more expensive, you decide to buy it. In investing, that's a sure way to lose

money, or at least lose out on the possible gain. Rule number four is to be greedy when others are fearful and

fearful when others are greedy. They behave very, very peculiarly in terms of their reactions because they're human

beings, and they get excited when others get excited; they get greedy when others get greedy; they get fearful when

others get fearful. And they'll continue to do so, and you will, you know, you will see things you won't believe in your

lifetime in securities markets. I wrote an article for Forbes in 1979. I just said, how can this be? Pension funds in

1970 put 100% of their new money in stocks because they were wild about stocks. Then they got a

lot cheaper, and they put a record low of 9% of their net new money in 1978.

Warren Buffett: "to get RICH, just do these 4 things"

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