Billionaire Warren Buffett has a way of distilling timeless, vital investing concepts into almost humorous quips. While they might make you chuckle at first, they’re often meant more literally than most people realize. This is true of an important concept outlined in his 1996 letter to Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B) (BRK.A) shareholders, when he wrote, “we continue to make more money when snoring than when active.”
It wasn’t self-deprecation, and it wasn’t humor for humor’s sake. It was a blunt summary of how Berkshire Hathaway actually created wealth, and an indictment of how most investors think they should.
Buffett – CEO at the time, and now chairman – was explaining that Berkshire’s portfolio barely changed, yet results kept improving. No frantic trading. No macro bets. No reactions to interest-rate rumors or market panics. The businesses simply kept earning more money. Time, not activity, did the work.
This runs directly against the instincts the market trains into investors. Action feels productive. Sitting still feels negligent. But Buffett learned early that the market doesn’t reward effort, it rewards judgment. Once the judgment is right, once you’ve bought a great business at a sensible price, interference usually makes things worse, not better.
Every trade introduces friction. Taxes, transaction costs, timing errors, and ego quietly compound against you. Berkshire avoided all of that by refusing to confuse motion with intelligence. Buffett didn’t believe great companies needed constant supervision any more than a well-built bridge needs daily reinforcement.
What makes the quote uncomfortable is that it exposes an industry problem. Most investors, professionals included, are paid to act. Activity becomes a substitute for insight. Commentary replaces patience. Berkshire’s results suggested that much of that activity wasn’t just unnecessary, it was destructive.
“Snoring” in this quote wasn’t laziness. It was discipline. Buffett spent years waiting for a few clear opportunities, then held them through boredom, volatility, and ridicule. While others chased trends, Berkshire let compounding quietly do its work.
That’s the deeper message behind the quip. The best investors often look inactive from the outside because their real work happened long before the trade was placed. Once the decision is right, the smartest move is often to do nothing at all.
In investing, boredom is not a failure state. For Berkshire Hathaway, it was a competitive advantage, and one that made far more money than constant activity ever could.
On the date of publication, Caleb Naysmith did not have (either directly or indirectly) positions in any of the securities mentioned in this article. All information and data in this article is solely for informational purposes. For more information please view the Barchart Disclosure Policy here.
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