All of which should be read in their original context, not quoted as a single line.
Your #1 is a classic example. People often quote this when a specific stock tanks on bad news, as their own justification for "buying the dip", even if the stock is sinking on
very specific bad news. And they roll out the "be greedy when others are fearful!" quote. Except... if you pulled open the 1986 Berkshire Hathaway Chairman's letter in which that quote is found, you would discover that contextually, Buffett is talking more broadly about
the wider market - i.e. buy when the whole market is fearful, sell when it is greedy (hence he doubled down on certain banks during the 2008 GFC fears - all financials were selling off on market fear, it was not stock-specific news).
Below is the quote in its immediate context, which you'll see references "the market", "the investment community", "market aberrations", "Wall Street", "a bull market", all terms suggesting that Buffett was talking about fear/greed on a market scale, not so much at an individual stock level (i.e. your stock releases bad news, and it gets sold off as a result).
But looking at how BRN management apply Buffett quotes to their own business, I seriously doubt they have ever read the letters in which these quotes actually appear. BRN is not a stock that could ever be said is selling "well below intrinsic business value" - it has been hyped up no end, and is slowly reverting to the mean.
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Common stocks, of course, are the most fun. When conditions are right that is, when companies with good economics and good management sell well below intrinsic business value - stocks sometimes provide grand-slam home runs. But we currently find no equities that come close to meeting our tests. This statement in no way translates into a stock market prediction: we have no idea - and never have had - whether the market is going to go up, down, or sideways in the near- or intermediate term future.
What we do know, however, is that occasional outbreaks of those two super-contagious diseases, fear and greed, will forever occur in the investment community. The timing of these epidemics will be unpredictable. And the market aberrations produced by them will be equally unpredictable, both as to duration and degree. Therefore, we never try to anticipate the arrival or departure of either disease. Our goal is more modest: we simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful.
As this is written, little fear is visible in Wall Street. Instead, euphoria prevails - and why not? What could be more exhilarating than to participate in a bull market in which the rewards to owners of businesses become gloriously uncoupled from the plodding performances of the businesses themselves. Unfortunately, however, stocks can’t outperform businesses indefinitely.https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/1986.html
(20min delay)
