The investment game always involves considering both quality and price, and the trick is to get more quality than you pay for in price. It's just that simple.
I’d say that Berkshire Hathaway’s system is adapting to the nature of the investment problem as it really is. We’ve really made the money out of high quality businesses. In some cases, we bought the whole business. And in some cases, we just bought a big block of stock. But when you analyze what happened, the big money’s been made in the high quality businesses. And most of the other people who’ve made a lot of money have done so in high quality businesses.
It takes almost no capital to open a new See's candy store. We're drowning in capital of our own that has almost no cost. It would be crazy to franchise stores like some capital-starved pancake house. We like owning our own stores as a matter of quality control.
See's candy company was the first high-quality business we ever bought.
