Warren Buffett is one of the most well-known investors of all time, helping Berkshire Hathaway )) consistently beat the S&P 500 before he at the end of 2025. Buffett’s advice from a 2013 interview about timing investments still rings true today.

Buffett’s Baseball Analogy

A lover of the sport of baseball, Buffett used an analogy of the sport and the history of one of the sport’s greatest players to highlight how investors can be patient.

"Ted Williams wrote a book called ‘The Science of Hitting,’" Buffett told a crowd of students at Georgetown University in September 2013.

In the book, there is a diagram of the strike zone divided into 77 squares, Buffett recalled. Of those squares, if Williams swings at only his sweet zone, he would hit .400. But if he also swings at low pitches in the strike zone where he doesn’t hit as well, his average drops to .230.

Buffett says Williams and baseball players are at a disadvantage because they have to swing at pitches outside their sweet spots if the count is 0-2 or 1-2 or the pitch may be called a strike.

"In investing, there’s no called strikes."

Williams was a career .344 average hitter in the MLB, ranking among the best hitters ever and the winner of six American League batting titles for the best hitting average.

"I don’t have to swing, nobody’s gonna call me out on called strikes," Buffett added.

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Investing a Game of Patience

During his comments, Buffett said that people can throw any stocks at him like Microsoft and others and he can be patient, similar to a batter waiting for the right pitch.

"I can wait there and look at thousands of companies day after day," Buffett told the students.

Buffett said he can wait until he finds a company he likes and understands and likes the price the stock is trading at.

"It’s an enormously advantageous game."

Buffett said investors don’t need to have an opinion on every stock or sector. He used an example of if he were to give students a punch card with 20 punches, and they could only make that many investment decisions, they would probably be picky and think hard about the 20 stocks.

"You don’t need 20 right decisions to get very rich. Four or five will probably do it over time."

Buffett recalled missing out on Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN) as a business he didn’t understand at the time.

"I don’t have to understand all kinds of business."

Berkshire Hathaway would later buy Amazon stock in 2019, before exiting the position entirely in the first quarter of this year under new CEO Greg Abel.

Among the companies that Buffett said he understood that did well were Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) and Coca-Cola (NYSE:KO). Buffett referenced knowing the math on how many servings Coca-Cola sells each day and how the product travels well globally, and people will continue drinking the company’s products.

Today, Coca-Cola is the third largest position in the Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate at 12% of assets as of the end of the first quarter. Bank of America is the fourth largest position in the Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate at 9.5% of assets as of the end of the first quarter.

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