On Warren Buffett's 94th birthday, people share his best investing advice

By Weston Blasi

Buffett has a net worth of $148 billion, making him the sixth-richest person in the world

Investing legend and Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Chief Executive Warren Buffett turned 94 on Friday, and people took to social media to post their favorite pieces of advice Buffett has shared.

The "Oracle of Omaha" has a net worth of $148 billion, according to Forbes, making him the sixth-richest person in the world. Only Larry Ellison, Mark Zuckerberg, Bernard Arnault, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk have a higher net worth than Buffett.

"You're not going to get 500 great opportunities," Buffett told a room of students in a video shared on X, formerly Twitter. "You would be better off when you got out of school here, you got a punch card with 20 punches on it, and every financial decision you made, you used up a punch. You'd get very rich because you'd think through very hard each one."

Buffett has on many occasions said he values investing in companies and projects that he understands - a lesson that he and the late Charles Munger, his investing partner, cited often.

"Charlie and I missed a lot of things ... and what we really regretted was missing something that turned out to be very big. But we never worried about missing something that we didn't understand," Buffett said at Berkshire's annual meeting earlier this year.

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Many Buffett fans cite his investing advice as timeless - including Buffett himself.

"I mean, you have to buy businesses, or little pieces of businesses called stocks. And you have to buy them at attractive prices and you have to buy into good businesses, and that advice will be the same 100 years from now in terms of investing," Buffett said in another clip shared on X.

"It's the temperamental quality, not an intellectual quality. You don't need tons of IQ in this business ... you do not have to be able to play three-dimensional chess," he said. "You need a stable personality. You need a temperament that neither derives great pleasure from being with the crowd, or against the crowd," Buffett said in another clip shared on social media.

As Buffett ages, some have wondered what will happen to his family's fortune after he passes. In terms of advice, Buffett has said he informed his wife that she should simply invest 90% of her wealth into the S&P 500 SPX for the rest of her life.

Buffett's 94th birthday comes just a few days after Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A) (BRK.B) became just the ninth company to cross the $1 trillion market-cap threshold. Berkshire has also made headlines lately after selling more than $5 billion worth of Bank of America Corp. stock (BAC) after a recent surge in the company's share price.

Some of Buffett's biggest investment wins over the years include Apple Inc. (AAPL), Coca-Cola Co. (KO), American Express Co. (AXP) and one of his earliest investments, the now wholly Berkshire-owned Geico.

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-Weston Blasi

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09-02-24 0912ET

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