De waarde van elke investering volgens Buffett

Buffett: "Any investment is worth all the cash you're going to get out between now and judgement day discounted back."

"De waarde van elke investering is al het geld dat je eruit krijgt tussen nu en de dag des oordeels verdisconteerd terug naar vandaag."

Buffett: "Aesop, in between tortoises and hares, and all these other things he found time to write about birds. And he said, "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush." Now that isn't quite complete because the question is, how sure are you that there are two in the bush, and how long do you have to wait to get them out? Now, he probably knew that but he just didn't have time because he had all these other parables to write and had to get on with it. But he was halfway there in 600 BC. That's all there is to investing is, how many birds are in the bush, when are you going to get them out, and how sure are you?

Now if interest rates are 15 percent, roughly, you've got to get two birds out of the bush in five years to equal the bird in the hand. But if interest rates are 3 percent, and you can get two birds out in 20 years, it still makes sense to give up the bird in the hand, because it all gets back to discounting against an interest rate. The problem is often you don't know not only how many birds are in the bush, but in the case of the internet companies there weren't any birds in the bush. But they still take the bird that you give them if they're in the hand.

But I actually have written about this sort of thing, and stealing heavily from Aesop who wrote it some 2600 years ago, but I've been behind on my reading. Yeah?"