Business Volatility Quotes

We regard using [a stock's] volatility as a measure of risk is nuts. Risk to us is 1) the risk of permanent loss of capital, or 2) the risk of inadequate return. Some great businesses have very volatile returns - for example, See's [a candy company owned by Berkshire] usually loses money in two quarters of each year - and some terrible businesses can have steady results.

I made a million, and I lost a million.

In this business, you can come and go in a second.

When I ran a small IT services business in the 1990s, it had strong recurring revenues - yet I couldn't accurately forecast cash flow for even the next few quarters. Small changes in the customer base or losing/hiring a few key employees could create massive swings in cash flow.

Overnight business could go down enough to hurt; yet as a rule it slowly recovered-sometimes it seemed to take forever-went up, not high enough to be really up, only not down.

The future will be less predictable, forecast rises will shrink, company lifetimes will shrink, new entrants will proliferate and it's going to just get more unpredictable.

We're never pleased when our ratings aren't growing at the rate we would like, but we understand that circumstances will always have us going one way or the other from time to time.

Business runs hot and cold so the more you're in charge of your own destiny, the better off you are.

The entertainment industry isn't secure.

It's really impossible to project ahead even six months in this business.

The toughest decision is always whether to open a restaurant. Two or three bad months, and you could be out of business.

Things end in this business. Shows get canceled, or you walk away from them - but most likely, things get canceled.