Warren Buffett: “Really Successful People Say No to Almost Everything”

This is important lesson to even non-professional investor like me.

You should not use the data that is given or easily available to you just because it's easy to get. You should think first what you need to know and then get that data. Just because it's everywhere, does not mean it's valuable. In fact, it's usually the opposite.

Examples:

* Everybody pushes you information of how much their whatever has gained in 1,3,5 years compared to stock index. But that's too short period for stocks. It's usually not relevant information.

* Gains from bottom to bottom or top to top in stock market over market cycles is something you might want, not from bottom to the current highs as is usually used in marketing.

* Price index is everywhere but if you save for long term, you actually want to see what is the total return index. If you want to compare Berkshire Hathaway to SP500 you want to compare to SP500TR, not to the price index (BRK does not pay dividends).

* Taxes, costs, third party risk etc. must be counted in. Low cost index fund may have high hidden drags baked in because in some countries tax dividends paid to foreign firms differently from locals.

Chesterton says it a lot better than I could: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/11505/11505-h/11505-h.htm#THE...

That's not true. Buffett bought a lot of Apple stock in 2016.