“In investing, I’m in a no-called strike business, which is the best business you can be in. I can look at a thousand different companies, and I don’t have to be right on every one of them, or even fifty of ’em. So I can pick the ball I want to hit. And the trick in investing is just to sit there and watch pitch after pitch go by, and wait for the one right in your sweet spot.”
— Warren Buffett, Becoming Warren Buffett HBO Documentary (2017)
Warren Buffett, chairman of Berkshire Hathaway and widely regarded as the greatest investor of his generation, has a rare gift for making complex ideas feel simple. Speaking in the 2017 HBO documentary Becoming Warren Buffett, a film that offered an unusually personal look at his life and thinking, he reached for baseball to explain something most people get wrong about investing.
The analogy is precise. In baseball, a batter who lets a pitch go by can be called out on strikes. In investing, there is no such penalty. You can watch a thousand opportunities pass without consequence, and only commit when the conditions are exactly right. Buffett has built one of the most remarkable financial records in history not by swinging often, but by swinging well.
What makes this worth sitting with is how quietly it challenges the assumption that more action means more results. Markets reward the appearance of busyness, and most investors feel pressure to stay active. Buffett suggests the opposite: that restraint, patience, and the willingness to wait for your moment are not passive qualities but disciplined ones.
The image of a pitch crossing the sweet spot says everything. You do not force it. You recognize it.
