“The trick is, when there’s nothing to do, do nothing.” That is the homespun wisdom of the decidedly unexcitable Warren Buffett, and it seems to have served him well. But most people in finance could not act on the investment sage’s advice even if they were temperamentally inclined to do so. They profit from trades, get paid for deals, earn commission on transactions. Without activity, there is no business.
Mr Buffett’s good fortune is, he says, that he does not “get paid for activity, just for being right. As to how long we’ll wait, we’ll wait indefinitely”. Almost alone in his industry, Mr Buffett is allowed to wait indefinitely, because he has acquired a reputation for being right.
I am in France at the moment, finishing a book about finance, which seems a world away from the events that have dominated the local news. The response to the massacre in Paris last week was deeply moving: there were spontaneous gatherings on Wednesday and Thursday evenings; “Je suis Charlie” signs are displayed everywhere. The scale of Sunday’s demonstrations was extraordinary — an estimated 1.5m people in Paris, while in the southern town where I live, 10,000 people (out of 30,000 who live here) marched silently through the streets. French people talk a lot about solidarity: they have shown that such talk is not empty.