Don't Get Rich Quick."

A good example of long term astute trading is Warren Buffet who is now 78 years young. He is currently worth an estimated cool $52 billion give or take a million.

And he has achieved that by essentially looking for quality, well-managed companies that are undervalued by the market. And he is prepared to wait for the right moment as we have seen recently.

Probably one of his most ignored mantras is: "Don't get rich quick."Hence the name of this article.

What lessons can we learn from this Master Trader?

A classic move which resulted in his latest spending spree which was only last September when during the current credit crisis, Buffet purchased options to invest US5 billion in the bank holding company Goldman Sachs.

Buffet has been quoted as saying, "We've done business with them for years, with Goldman, and the price was right, the terms were right, the people were right. I decided to write a check."

Only this week Warren Buffet has invested a further $3bn in General Electric plus He announced only yesterday that Berkshire Hathaway had bought a stake in Hong Kong listed BYB Company, its shares have already jumped 42%.

Obviously Buffet had researched each Company minutely, firstly examining their value, then the risk factors involved and no doubt checking their future profit potential as well.

Buffet plainly has set criteria in place before he invests into anything. Some of this criteria is important and worth remembering, writing down and putting it into practice.

Buffet says it best: "The first rule of investing is don't lose money; the second rule is don't forget Rule No. 1."

Buffet understood this math foible: If you start with a dollar and lose 50 percent of your money, you'll be left with 50 cents. But then it takes a 100 percent return just to get back to your original dollar. So it's best not to lose your money in the first place.

Some of the other things that He is well known to check out are as follows:-

Buffet checks out the ROE (Returns on Equity) of the possible future investment. ROE is calculated by taking a company's net income and dividing it by shareholders' equity. By this He knows that it measures profits as a percentage of what the investors actually own, and it also reveals how efficiently a company's profits are growing.

He has been known to look for companies with around a return on equity of at least 15 percent on average but this is open to debate as there are no hard and fast rules on this one.

He also looks at the future activities of the Company and tries to calculate the future value of a company's expected future cash flows. It's his way of assessing a company's intrinsic value. Then Buffet looks for companies selling at a deep discount to that value.

If you just take a good look in today’s market you will see good Blue Chip stocks going for a premium discount.

He is also looking for companies with long-term competitive advantages that make this future forecasting safer and less risky.

Buffet therefore obviously is an ardent advocate of “Buy in Gloom” and then hangs onto them for the long term.

If you had invested only $1,000 that’s $7,760 in today’s dollars with Warren Buffet back in 1956 and never cashed them in. They would be worth a tidy $30.6 million at the end of 2007.That is what you call long term investing.

Buffet is very patient prepared to wait till the right investment comes along. He is in no hurry; this is plainly obvious from the size of his portfolio. Judge this by the size of average manager of the value stock fund who spreads his or her investments among on average 146 different stocks.

He also advocates keeping Cash on hand just in case it is needed, for you never know when the next bargain investment is going to come along.

He's understands something that a lot of people don't appreciate. Having large amounts of cash doesn't have to hurt your performance. Cash can be a strategic asset." Cash currently represents more than 18 percent of Berkshire Hathaway's investment allocation.

It goes without saying that Buffet is a great believer in Diversification.

So in a nutshell is it definitely worth following in the footsteps of Warren Buffet? Even following just some of his rules could increase your chances of share trading success.