If you were to pick a list of the greatest stock market investors of all time, any serious list would be topped by Warren Buffett. His exploits as the Prime Mover behind Berkshire Hathaway are the stuff of legend, with consistent double digit returns and occasional years when he beat the overall market by 10 percentage points or more. However, the real secret to Buffett’s success is his long term perspective.

Over on Motley Fool, they point out that there are occasional five year periods when even the Oracle of Omaha falls behind the S&P 500 (for a chart, check this one out). If you looked at just that five year period, you would think this guy is an idiot, that he did not know his armpit from third base and why in the heck would anybody follow his advice. Obviously, you would also be very, very wrong.

The real key though, is that Buffett has a 10-20 year perspective, and sometimes much, much longer. After all, this is from the guy who said that his favorite holding period is “forever”.

The original article points out that in addition to his outstanding understanding of the market, Warren Buffett also has tremendous patience (that 10-20 year perspective) and tremendous confidence, as seen in his famous statement that “risk is not knowing what you are doing”.

What sort of time frame are you looking at to meet your investing goals? Let’s talk about it in the comments.