1. What does it mean to own stock in a company?
Owning stock in a company means that you own a piece of that company. If you own stock in the McDonald's company for example, it means you are one of the owners of McDonald's. Each piece of stock is called a share, and the more shares you own, the more of the company belongs to you. When the company is successful, your stock will become more valuable, too.
来源：Source: Secret Millionaires Club ；URL: http://www.smckids.com/ask-warren/all-questions ；Time: 2010
2. Where can you buy stock with the cheapest commissions?
There are many places to buy stocks, and the commissions all vary. It is important in life to look not for what is cheapest, but where the most value is delivered. I suggest that you ask your parents if they can check some of them out with you. Maybe you can make a chart where you can compare the costs on one side, with the services offered on the other. It will be a good exercise, and whether you buy stocks or not, you will learn from the process.
来源：Source: Secret Millionaires Club ；URL: http://www.smckids.com/ask-warren/all-questions ；Time: 2010
3. How do you know when you are going to lose money and when you aren't? Since the stock market changes every minute.
That is a very good question. The answer is you don’t know when you are going to make money or lose money. You are right, the stock market changes every minute. Because of that, you should never buy a stock expecting to make money in the short term. When you buy a stock, you are actually buying a share of that company. If it is a good company then you will make money over time as its value goes up. When you buy a stock, you need to imagine that the stock market will be closed for 20 years and you will not be able to look at its price. That way, you wont be distracted by the short term ups and downs. A company will be successful if it offers good products and services at a fair price while being run by honest, capable managers. Over the long run, such companies tend to appreciate and go up in value.
来源：Source: Secret Millionaires Club ；URL: http://www.smckids.com/ask-warren/all-questions ；Time: 2010
4. How did you get to be so rich?
I was lucky to be born in a free country like America where I had all kinds of opportunities. And I had parents who made sure I understood the importance of a good education, and I learned at a very early age how important it is to work hard and be honest. I always had an interest in business, and learned how important it was to listen and learn. I only invest in a business I fully understand, and then I am patient and I let my investment grow. My advice to you is to work hard in school, and look for something you like to do. If you are happy, you will be successful.
来源：Source: Secret Millionaires Club ；URL: http://www.smckids.com/ask-warren/all-questions ；Time: 2010
5. What is the main contribution to the stock market crash of this century?
This is a very difficult question to answer and even the smartest and best economists don't have a clear answer or agreement. One thing that we do know is that when a stock price goes down, there is less demand than there is supply at that price. More people want to sell their shares of that company, than want to buy, so the price keeps getting lower until somebody is willing to buy it.
来源：Source: Secret Millionaires Club ；URL: http://www.smckids.com/ask-warren/all-questions ；Time: 2010
6. How do you feel about the current real estate environment?
If you are buying to own a home, that is fine. Otherwise, it seems to be getting into bubble territory. We're not excited about real estate because generally there is not enough return at current prices.
来源：Source: Student Visit 2005 ；URL: http://boards.fool.com/buffettjayhawk-qa-22736469.aspx?sort=whole#22803680 ；Time: May 6, 2005
7. Your views on the securitization of real estate?
There has been enormous securitization of the debt too of real estate and that is one of the items right now that is really clogging up the capital markets. The mortgage back securities are just not moving, commercial, not residential mortgage backs. But I think you are directing your question at equities probably. The equities, if you leave out the corporate form, have been a lousy way to own equities. You have interjected a corporate income tax into something that people individually have been able to own with a single tax, and to have the normal corporate form you have a double taxation in there. You really don't need it and it takes too much of the return.
REITS have, in effect, created a conduit so you don't get the double taxation, but they also generally have fairly high operating expenses. If you get real estate, let's just say you can buy fairly simple types of real estate at an 8% yield, or thereabouts, and you take away close to 1% to 1.5% by the time you count stock options and everything, it is not a terribly attractive way to own real estate. Maybe the only way a guy with a $1,000 or $5,000 can own it but if you have $1 million or $10 million, you are better off owning the real estate properties yourself instead of sticking some intermediary in between who will get a sizable piece of the return for himself. So we have found very little in that field.
You will see an announcement in the next couple of weeks that may belie what I am telling you today. I don't want you to think I am double crossing you up here. But generally speaking we have seen very little in that field that gets us excited. People sometimes get very confused about--they will look at some huge land company, like Texas Pacific Land Trust, which has been around over 100 years and has got a couple of million acres in Texas. And they will sell 1% of their land every year and they will take that (as income? Garbled) and come up with some huge value compared to the market value. But that is nonsense if you really own the property. You can't move. You can't move 50% of the properties or 20% of the properties, it is way worse than an illiquid stock. So you get these, I think, you get some very silly valuations placed on a lot of real estate companies by people who really don't understand what it is like to own one and try to move large quantity of properties.
REITS have behaved horribly in this market as you know and it is not at all inconceivable that they become a class that would get so unpopular that they would sell at significant discounts from what you could sell the properties for. And they could get interesting as a class and then the question is whether management would fight you in that process because they would be giving up their income stream for managing things and their interests might run counter to the shareholders on that. I have always wondered about REITS that have managements they say their assets are so wonderful, and they are so cheap and then they (management) go out and sell stock. There is a contradiction in that. They say our stock is very cheap at $28 and then they sell a lot of stock at $28 less an underwriting commission. There is a disconnect there. But it is a field we look at.
Charlie and I can understand real estate, and we would be open for very big transactions periodically. If there was a LTCM situation translated to real estate, we would be open to that, the trouble is so many other people would be too that it would unlikely go at a price that would get us really get us excited.
来源：Source: Lecture at the University of Florida Business School ；URL: ；Time: October 15th 1998