Warren Buffett: How NOT to Get Rich on Wall Street

If you’re looking for the latest and greatest get-rich-quick tip on a hot new stock that will make you a millionaire, take Warren Buffett’s advice: It won’t work, so do your own work.

“I mean, on any given day, two million shares of Coca-Cola may trade,” Buffett said during a 1994 Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting. “That’s a lot of people selling, a lot of people buying. If you talk to one person, you’d hear one thing … you really should not make decisions in securities based on what other people think.

“A public opinion poll will just — it will not get you rich on Wall Street.”

Per CNBC:

While this advice was given more than two decades ago, it holds true now more than ever with the prevalence of social media. There are a lot of opinions out there now and more news than ever for investors to sort through.

Buffett’s advice is to counter this noise by sticking with companies you feel like you know and have an advantage over others in evaluating.

“So you really want to stick with businesses that you feel you can somehow evaluate yourself,” he said at the meeting.

Following his own advice has paid off for the Chairman and CEO Berkshire Hathaway. By poring through annual reports and other filings, Buffett’s stock allocation decisions and outright acquisitions through all kinds of difficult market environments have driven Berkshire’s stock price up by 12 percent annually the last 25 years, better than the stock market’s 9 percent annual total return over that same time frame, according to Factset.