Yet another example to me of how he literally engineered his life for success, using principles like choosing which variables to hold fixed. What discipline.
I respect Buffett greatly on a professional level, and think it's the height of arrogance to believe any one of us personally has the moral right to decide which level of lawful activity becomes turpitudinous greed.
THAT SAID...
My uncle (he's 98) had a passing acquaintance with Buffett during their overlap at Penn, and in the one econ class they shared, he remarked having heard Buffett say in almost salivating eagerness as he rubbed his hands that if only there could be another Great Depression, he would make a killing. The dude has value investing in his DNA beyond anything else, I truly believe. But he's argued for changing complex and unfair taxation, and always been a good citizen as far as I can tell. I think if all of Wall Street were like him, the world would be a much better place.
A man who built what he loves and produced so much surplus value for the rest of us to enjoy (read: profit) is _exactly_ a hero. I’m sure I could find ways critique him, but not in the context of celebrating his career.
Ontologically he is just a single old dude with few real skills having lived a life of affluence.
He sits high in the political hierarchy of the day, has personally achieved little more than that. Been bailed out by that political hierarchy. His wealth is a politically correct hallucination. He has no Scrooge McDuck vault of treasure. We all been conditioned to believe his name in the digital ledger has a much bigger float value associated with it.
All he has built is a Halo effect; he's an aura farmer. His hands have not seen the work that provided his clothes or food. His accomplishments being ephemeral political narrative may have effectively never happened.
Art vs artist debate is tired, as is celebrity distance appraisal. If you want to know if someone is good or bad your best bet (still iffy) is to ask their kids or spouse. That’s he’s skilled at the financial game is obvious. Whether that’s valuable is a philosophical question that has little to do with Warren Buffet.
He made his billions by figuring out who were worthy people to give money to.
He's not exactly curing cancer but i could think of a lot more underhanded ways to make billions. I think he is above average ethically relative to his billionaire peers.
He owns a lot of companies and keeps his distance from their reputations. Companies make money and stay on top by doing awful things. Think about coca cola and plastic pollution. Buffett has to own that when he has a controlling stake.
Mostly true, compared to other billionaires he's a much better flavor and a stronger record of appearing human but still, agree. I'd recommend reading
The Snowball for a more complete understanding of him.
You ever see Good Will Hunting? The scene where he talks about where he can “just play” and then describes the most talented people in history at what they do. That’s Buffett in his chosen life’s work.
Buffett didn’t get, for example, a small loan of a million dollars to start. He’s been working at this longer than probably anyone what will ever read this comment has been alive.
He doesn’t care about the money in the sense I feel you’re implying.
Nobody is perfect, and holding anyone to that standard sets an impossible threshold.
I don’t know how familiar you are with Warren Buffett, but I would encourage you to dig into his Wikipedia page at least, however accurate we think that is these days.
It's fascinating how even smart people like you become so utterly naive when it comes to politics. This guy partly owns some of the most evil companies humanity has ever created ffs. Zero ethics, 100% capitalist greed.
I don't want a society where you have to be a hero to produce mass benefit to others. I want a society where greedy people feel like they have to serve the needs and wants of others to fulfill their greed.
I don't know to what extent Buffet does it. Nor does our current quasi-fascist society where the government is highly embedded with industry and regulating who is the winner and who is the loser and then taxing/inflating the working class to make sure they stay afloat.
But in the idealistic version of America, it is supposed to be a place where becoming a billionaire means you are not just producing billions of profit for yourself, but billions of value for others. That every deal, both sides are better off. This is what we aspire to, the whole ideal towards voluntary trade and capitalism as a method a tide that rises almost all boats and at the very least doesn't involve sinking another boat lower.
“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our necessities but of their advantages.” — Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations
Well, impossible to prove of course but it reminds me of Ingvar Kamprad (the man behind IKEA) who used to drive an old Volvo when in Sweden to appear as a "man of the people".
In fact he had his main residence in Switzerland and was filthy rich which is a bit of a hard swallow especially in Sweden, a country still very much affected by the "Law of Jante".
A reporter that was doing a documentary about his wealth asked him once directly when stepping out of his old Volvo and Kamprad kinda lost it; it was a big kerfuffle at the time on the telly.
For those paying attention it was really revealing about the true nature of the man (let me add he was a young Nazi back in the day).
Most people came to his defense like the red-blooded capitalist gentleman commenting above about Buffet being a 100% American.
The older generation still swallow the farce hook, line and sinker. For the rest of us it's pretty clear it was a well thought-out facade to placate the plebeians to sell more cheap furniture.
Buffet is not a good guy. Our society’s greatest problem right now is concentrated corporate power being used to destroy the ability of working people to prosper.
Buffet had an active and direct role in making this happen. He supported and advocated for monopoly, and profited from it.
He lived a lavish life that included opulent mansions and private jets, and used his resources to deftly drive a media narrative of himself as a regular guy, with apparent success as your post demonstrates.
Not doubting you, but any specific examples of him supporting monopoly?
Or are you saying the general environment of high finance supports this?
No doubt he had more money than he needed but if this is referring to his preference for coka-cola and apple stock / any stocks with the ability to set their own prices because of market dominance, I feel like that’s not a totally fair criticism.
I wonder how this will affect BRK-B, given that so many investors (or at least the "retail " ones) buy its shares with the assumption that they provide exposure to Buffett's strategy.
In any case, I hope Warren can experience not working at all in the few years he likely has left after being alive for over 1/3 of his country's existence!
BRK is now (since the last 10-20 years) large and diversified enough that it more or less tracks the S&P 500 and the overall stock market. There isn't some genius trading strategy in there. Buffett himself tells everyone who will listen to buy and hold a diversified index fund for a long period of time.
BRK is like a conservative S&P500. It offers enough diversification off the "total market" funds for me that I invest a small but material portion of my "safe money" with them.
Sort of like holding boring dividend stocks without the dividend.
BRK and VOO have a correlation of 0.7 over the past 5 years. That's high enough that they have been relatively similar, but not so high that I would really say it "tracks" it.
Of course, no one knows the future so who knows if this will continue.
I don't know the guy, but by all indications he is even-keeled, low-stress, conscientious but come what may. Given his nationality and net-worth, I'd wager that Warren is a centenarian in waiting, unless and until he chooses to invest in the afterlife. Whichever comes first.
There's no Buffett's strategy. Market buys whatever Buffett's company bought. That's how he got unusual gains.
Moment of fame stretched over 60 year of clipping coupons off of that initial fame.
The thing that made it possible was that he was content with his performance and never tried to one up himself. He kept his fame and market interest in him simmering over six decades inatead burning out in one bright flash.
> That sure does trivialize him. If that was your goal, you nailed it.
Pretty much. I'm always interested what's left once I reject te ususal narratives that people keep repeating to each other. I find this kind of excercise insightful and satisfying.
While in every working thing there's myriad of significant details, the main engine of operation is usually just one usually quite straightforward thing. I like making attempts at recognizing those main things. I'm sometimes wrong but even when I am I find satisfaction that I tried instead just repeating some selection of what other people said.
I read somewhere that Bershire Hathaway had sort of finished it's mission. 40 years ago there were lots of large companies who were very 'inefficient' and BH would come along, invest a lot, and start demanding changes. Company performance would improve and BH would make big $$$$.
Now there are few of these and it is hard to do.
I don't know enough to know whether it is right or wrong. but I think that is what I read.
Isn't that the model of every private equity? It was always hard to do well.
Although it doesn't seem that way, there are lot of companies that have become large recently, it is best time ever historically for companies to be able to grow large quickly much more so than 50 years ago in the early days of BH.
There are 1000+ unicorns today, about 50 of the fortune 500 are founded > 2000, a large number of companies that have chosen to remain private with revenues in excess of >$10B like Stripe or SpaceX etc
While it is true that lot of the action has been in sectors BH has never been comfortable holding large assets in such as SaaS, new fin-tech(i.e. crypto etc), or gig econ(Airbnb/Uber etc), social media(tiktok et al.) etc, that doesn't mean the principles are no longer needed or there aren't opportunities to take stake in these now mature companies and drive value.
Well, many companies are still mispriced, but stock markets today look a lot more like voting machines than weighing machines - so it takes more time to be proven right (or wrong).
Berkshire had a pivot where, decades back, Munger convinced Buffett to switch from investing in bad companies at a great price to good companies at a good price. Their new strategy is still active.
That said, the turnaround 'mission' you mention about still happens, but is more associated with private equity than Berkshire.
This is merely your failure to imagine it. Maybe they enjoy it, maybe they have a specific goal they want to achieve, have some sort of obsession, maybe they feel duty to all the people they lead and relie on them, think they are making the world better so they feel compelled to continue working, are mad with power and enjoy lording over other people. There are many many reasons why one would work after being financially secure, and they're all equally valid as a personal motivator.
And, anyways, I think you say this now, but if you were to get those 10 millions you would probably change your tune. A lot of people would find some other project to dedicate their energy. Especially the kind of people that make stuff happen.
It can also be as simple as finding meaning in the habit of work and the growth which may come with it. Nihilism and hedonism wear thin after a short while.
I am one of the person who, if they got 40 mil USD tomorrow, would just work much harder on stuff I like to work on (which is making open source software sustainable in robotics), because I would have to spend less time have to take care about the economics of daily life. I could get a chef to cook me personalized healthy meals. I could have a mini-gym at home (which is not that expensive to be honest).
but I could get a home near a major airport like 10 mins from SFO, and so with working out and eating consuming 4 hours and sleeping 6 hours a day and 2 hour of spouse time. I legit have 12 hours a day to work everyday. I could easily do that in a sustainable manner 6 days a week, and spending Sunday relaxing by helping out in my parent's farm and then relaxing in the evening before going back to work next week.
Seems like an ideal life for me. The only difference from today is the extra 3 hours I spend in traffic and an average 1 hour daily in running errands. And extra work on Saturday like fetching groceries, looking after my home, fixing stuff etc.
If I get money, I could save that 4 hour of my life and dedicate it to working on something I really like.
Work life is quite a lot different for a working-stiff than it is for a CEO. In large part, their company is an extension of themselves. Work whatever hours you want to. Private plane to take you wherever you want to go for free, if you can come up with a work-related excuse to go there (with no need to justify not coming back for weeks). Multiple folks acting more-or-less as your personal assistants. An office bigger than your house, filled with anything you want in it, on the company's dime. A big pool of cash you can order the company to throw at whatever interests you. etc.
Based on this description, you could say that what the CEO does in no way resembles what real work looks like for 90% of the population. Which I think is true. It's a pity they make so much more than people who do actual work.
He sat around talking to people, reading, betting on stocks/financial markets, playing games and occasionally buying a business.... that is many people's dream retirement.
Can you imagine reading and researching the world on your retirement? Because that's what people like him do, except they mainly focus on 10-K statements. Those are genuinely interesting to read once you learn to skip boilerplate and go for the content.
He also seems to talk to a lot of people, and he has access to pretty much anyone given his stature. Imagine being passionate about business and then being able to spend every day talking to people about their businesses and their thoughts on business. I'm surprised he retired at all!
I would probably be Software Engineering even if my employer didn't pay me to. As evidence, note that it's new year's eve and I'm writing patches (and waiting for tests) during my holidays for someone else's FOSS project I'm contributing to :).
I my employer didn't pay me, I'd stop working on their projects. But in the meantime, I enjoy my profession (at least most of the time) and get paid. If I had enough money then I'd stop working on what my management wants and work on stuff that I want to work on. And I have to imagine that at this point, Buffet is also doing whatever he wants to.
Warren Buffett also retried at a younger age. In a 1969 letter to partners he wrote, “I intend to give all limited partners the required formal notice of my intention to retire”. But life had other plans…
I'm at that point now, debating when I'll retire. We only live once and I'm not sure if I should continue working. I've reached financial freedom at a pretty young age. It's a daily debate in my mind when to call it quits, but I've never not worked and it's difficult to make the change. What I'm missing in life is time and that's what work takes from me and is the driving force behind my desire to retire -- time to do other things in life.
And if you do have kids, the most profitable thing for your wife to do upon learning you won't be working any longer would be to divorce you, take 50%, impute your income for child support calculation at what you were earning before (so every 5 years you owe your full pre-tax salary). That way their quality of life won't be impacted nearly as much.
So 8x your pre-tax salary (like 11 or 12x post tax) is gone right off the bat as soon as you retire.
As a retired person I’ve always been curious about this. I questioned a friend who is multiple FU money rich. He said he just love his job, and he’s in a position to work the way he wants to work.
Not my cup of tea (and Die with Zero book explains the common sense on this) but I get why though. There is tons of status attached to it, lots of people don’t know what to do with themselves, a lot of identity ( especially in US) attached to the work.
For a lucky few of us, our job is something we might do unpaid if we had our needs addressed already. It's fun!
I like travel, I like relaxing at home. But I don't know if it's what I'd want to do all the time. I like having some pull, driving me towards a greater goal.
I agree with you. There are so many more worthwhile things to do than investing. I would also retire immediately with that kind of money and focus on creating real value in the world
For folks with the ability to make truckloads of money and then give it away to good causes, that is going to be the best choice v trying to add value in the world to make themselves feel better.
allocating capital well provides significant value to the world. His style of investing specifically meant not pouring money into hype stocks and instead investing in companies that have sustainable business models.
It provides purpose. Many people who retire early after doing all the random stuff they thought would be cool would likely find themselves isolated and decaying without purpose.
I get the sense that he arranged things so that he didn't have to work all that hard, he didn't do any short-term trading requiring constant attention and his work was done at his portfolio companies as soon as they had management he trusted.
We all have pleasure and suffering along the same couple of orders of magnitude.
In geological timespans, none of the fun you had will matter. Even a year from now, your memories are just wistful nostalgia (perhaps a psychological detriment!) And that's if your brain architecture is even set up to recall senses and events well (not everyone can).
My view is that the intellectual pursuit is more fulfilling than a world simulating traversal of novel experiences. Those neurons will turn to dust soon anyway, and it'll be like it never even happened. Why spend so much time fretting over it?
Spend time with family, but trying to rack up on restaurants and things and places and visits - meh, it's just simulation and squirts of neurotransmitters. Ephemeral. They leave no trace. It all fades to emptiness.
I'm not saying be completely stoic. But don't overdose on pleasure and thrill and novelty. Over indexing that way cuts down on impact.
Building never stops, even when you do. Laying a foundation shapes human behavior at scale. Leads to more shoulders being stood upon. Higher order effects.
Every single person I admire made an impact.
I'm not my genes that I was built from or the genes that I might pass down. I'm the ideas and deeds of a short life that hopefully left lasting impact and caused second order effects.
Hacker news moment. If you believe this, you are lost, but man. What a terrible take.
Build what? The next big ad serving platform? The next mass surveillance platform? New ways to squeeze money out of people? You’re right we all die so nothing matters, why would what you build matter more than the relationships you make, the good feelings you create? Build, but build art. Build something that will change peoples minds, make them feel good, make them want to change the world.
Do not conflate building something to make some guy richer, as just as or more important than spending time with family or creating true art.
Not the GP but I don’t think they were talking about “building something to make some guy richer” - they was were talking about building a life and relationships that positively impact the people they care about.
I always see fawning comments when it comes to Warren Buffet. I think people need to examine more closely what his portfolio companies do and how they’ve been successful. Some of them are genuinely positive stories. But in other places, the truth isn’t so pretty. Look up how rail workers are treated by BNSF, for example. Like many ultra wealthy people who are caught up in evaluating companies solely on financial grounds, Buffet ignores what the impact of his choices are. And let’s be real - there isn’t any “fair competition” in many parts of the American economy to fix these problems. The railways are especially problematic because the infrastructure they own creates monopolies in regions.
He’s no worse than CSX with public ownership. Rail workers are getting what they voted for - a dimishment of rights at the federal level and right to work crap that broke their union.
Don’t worship buffet, but study him. The Acquired podcast on him is a great jumping off point.
Why are you assuming that people aren't explicitly celebrating those negatives? Buffett is a capitalist, and the evils are part of the package. The majority of people here would do the same in a heartbeat to earn the same wealth and status.
In what world is he a “pseudo” philanthropist? He’s already given more than $60 Billion away and pledged to donate 99%+ of his wealth. He has also called for his class of ultra-wealthy to be taxed more
I can't help but wonder if Buffett's dividend focused strategy will continue to be a successful approach in the future. Buffett is no slouch, but seems to have fallen behind relatively unsophisticated investors like Musk and Zuckerburg as time went on and they focused on valuation more than returns/profit.
Buffet's strategy assumes a rational market, so I wouldn't expect it to work as well in an environment where stock market valuations are increasingly vibes-based and often wildly inflated by circumstances that should be illegal (like selling X to xAI to generate a voodoo valuation).
Arguably the entire market is heavily overvalued now, though, so while his strategies are probably no longer optimal, they'll probably continue to work out well enough at least until the next big correction.
It seems like something is broken since TSLA (for example) has been completely divorced from fundamentals since at least 2020. The richest man in the world has the vast majority of his net worth derived from vaporware and straight up fraud. Still wondering when the "weighing machine" kicks in.
Unfortunately it's expensive to short Tesla because Elon and Peter Thiel don't allow their shares to be shorted. Add to that, it's part of the S&P 500. It's going to take a while but I foresee a lot of red for TSLA. We'll see what happens but TSLA is already revising their target of cars sold in Q4
Some people suggest this is a function of too much wealth centred in too few people, causing a high demand for assets. If that is true, maybe that is where we should focus?
Massive wealth inequality is certainly a factor, not just in this but the associated affordability situation being faced by the group of people whose wealth isn't being buoyed by the stock market.
But I don't know what we can do about it when government has been captured by people with vested interests in not fixing anything.
It feels like things have to get bad enough to get people to actually rise up. Not like, revolution or anything, but real protest (and enough political awakening to understand that they are being fed culture war bullshit to distract them from the class war they should be waging).
I just asked ChatGPT what Warren Buffett's strategy is, and it said buying undervalued companies and holding for a long time. Is that true? I thought it's not a good idea to buy loser companies.
An undervalued company is one that everyone else thinks is a loser but actually isn't - if you can identify that (and maybe make some adjustments to it) you can make a lot of money pretty quickly.
Driving 7 minutes to work and stopping at a drive-thru to pick up McDonalds breakfast every day. The man is a true American hero.
Idk about hero, but he's definitely american. What a fast food warrior!
I always salute at the McDonalds drive-thru.
The man has enviable health.
Take a Caesar salad at a McDonald's every day, and your health will likely also be enviable.
Wealth does that.
Also, consistently eating 1 item from McDonald's every day is probably not going to tank your health (if it's one of your few diet vices).
We've got people drinking 600 calorie frappucinos before they touch a bite of food.
Yet another example to me of how he literally engineered his life for success, using principles like choosing which variables to hold fixed. What discipline.
If he was poor, people would call him lazy for eating mcdonalds everyday...
If you define success as number going up and to the right, sure.
Sorry, a person who life is built around greed is no hero.
I respect Buffett greatly on a professional level, and think it's the height of arrogance to believe any one of us personally has the moral right to decide which level of lawful activity becomes turpitudinous greed.
THAT SAID...
My uncle (he's 98) had a passing acquaintance with Buffett during their overlap at Penn, and in the one econ class they shared, he remarked having heard Buffett say in almost salivating eagerness as he rubbed his hands that if only there could be another Great Depression, he would make a killing. The dude has value investing in his DNA beyond anything else, I truly believe. But he's argued for changing complex and unfair taxation, and always been a good citizen as far as I can tell. I think if all of Wall Street were like him, the world would be a much better place.
A man who built what he loves and produced so much surplus value for the rest of us to enjoy (read: profit) is _exactly_ a hero. I’m sure I could find ways critique him, but not in the context of celebrating his career.
> A man who built what he loves and produced so much surplus value for the rest of us to enjoy (read: profit) is _exactly_ a hero.
Life imitates art, I suppose.
https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995
Tell me more about the surplus value that Warren produced
Thoughtless story-mode idolatry is exhausting.
Ontologically he is just a single old dude with few real skills having lived a life of affluence.
He sits high in the political hierarchy of the day, has personally achieved little more than that. Been bailed out by that political hierarchy. His wealth is a politically correct hallucination. He has no Scrooge McDuck vault of treasure. We all been conditioned to believe his name in the digital ledger has a much bigger float value associated with it.
All he has built is a Halo effect; he's an aura farmer. His hands have not seen the work that provided his clothes or food. His accomplishments being ephemeral political narrative may have effectively never happened.
He literally sits around and reads financial reports all day.
[delayed]
Art vs artist debate is tired, as is celebrity distance appraisal. If you want to know if someone is good or bad your best bet (still iffy) is to ask their kids or spouse. That’s he’s skilled at the financial game is obvious. Whether that’s valuable is a philosophical question that has little to do with Warren Buffet.
He made his billions by figuring out who were worthy people to give money to.
He's not exactly curing cancer but i could think of a lot more underhanded ways to make billions. I think he is above average ethically relative to his billionaire peers.
He owns a lot of companies and keeps his distance from their reputations. Companies make money and stay on top by doing awful things. Think about coca cola and plastic pollution. Buffett has to own that when he has a controlling stake.
He is an _American_ hero
He built his life around developing successful businesses. That's not greed.
Mostly true, compared to other billionaires he's a much better flavor and a stronger record of appearing human but still, agree. I'd recommend reading The Snowball for a more complete understanding of him.
Actualy, he didn't. He's probably the one billionaire alive today for which you could not make that case. I know of one other (but he's dead).
He was greedy when others were fearful ;)
Yvon Chouinard has a stronger claim
> He's probably the one billionaire alive today for which you could not make that case.
Is this Stockholm Syndrome?
Very likely. Billionaires can afford to cultivate a persona for the masses. It’s so odd when the majority actually buy it.
Not everyone can afford to waste energy on angry and envy directed toward private citizens who have literally nothing to do with them
You ever see Good Will Hunting? The scene where he talks about where he can “just play” and then describes the most talented people in history at what they do. That’s Buffett in his chosen life’s work.
Buffett didn’t get, for example, a small loan of a million dollars to start. He’s been working at this longer than probably anyone what will ever read this comment has been alive.
He doesn’t care about the money in the sense I feel you’re implying.
Nobody is perfect, and holding anyone to that standard sets an impossible threshold.
I don’t know how familiar you are with Warren Buffett, but I would encourage you to dig into his Wikipedia page at least, however accurate we think that is these days.
It's fascinating how even smart people like you become so utterly naive when it comes to politics. This guy partly owns some of the most evil companies humanity has ever created ffs. Zero ethics, 100% capitalist greed.
It's not that hard to see evil in everyone and it doesn't make one that much smarter
But hey, he also owns Sees Candy.
I don't want a society where you have to be a hero to produce mass benefit to others. I want a society where greedy people feel like they have to serve the needs and wants of others to fulfill their greed.
I don't know to what extent Buffet does it. Nor does our current quasi-fascist society where the government is highly embedded with industry and regulating who is the winner and who is the loser and then taxing/inflating the working class to make sure they stay afloat.
But in the idealistic version of America, it is supposed to be a place where becoming a billionaire means you are not just producing billions of profit for yourself, but billions of value for others. That every deal, both sides are better off. This is what we aspire to, the whole ideal towards voluntary trade and capitalism as a method a tide that rises almost all boats and at the very least doesn't involve sinking another boat lower.
“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our necessities but of their advantages.” — Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations
His whole "I love fast food and coca cola" thing is a fake persona
Well, impossible to prove of course but it reminds me of Ingvar Kamprad (the man behind IKEA) who used to drive an old Volvo when in Sweden to appear as a "man of the people".
In fact he had his main residence in Switzerland and was filthy rich which is a bit of a hard swallow especially in Sweden, a country still very much affected by the "Law of Jante".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Jante
A reporter that was doing a documentary about his wealth asked him once directly when stepping out of his old Volvo and Kamprad kinda lost it; it was a big kerfuffle at the time on the telly.
For those paying attention it was really revealing about the true nature of the man (let me add he was a young Nazi back in the day).
Most people came to his defense like the red-blooded capitalist gentleman commenting above about Buffet being a 100% American.
The older generation still swallow the farce hook, line and sinker. For the rest of us it's pretty clear it was a well thought-out facade to placate the plebeians to sell more cheap furniture.
As a red blooded capitalist who loves this country as much as the next patriot, I can assure you admiration for fast food and coke is 100% real.
Admiration for how American it is maybe but it’s goddamn preservative and sugar ridden slop.
Coca-Cola is a great energy drink. But you have to expend this energy, say, by thinking really hard.
if one is to make a fake persona, fast food and coke (the drink) probably won’t make top-100 list
Au contraire, larger-than-life people may desire to pass off as normal & common.
Or that's just what he feels. He also sleeps in a fairly normal home. Wouldn't he have a secret mega mansion if he was just putting on a show?
It's all fake to fool you!! Coca cola is only the popular beverage it is because the illuminati chose Warren to shill for it!!
Buffet is not a good guy. Our society’s greatest problem right now is concentrated corporate power being used to destroy the ability of working people to prosper.
Buffet had an active and direct role in making this happen. He supported and advocated for monopoly, and profited from it.
He lived a lavish life that included opulent mansions and private jets, and used his resources to deftly drive a media narrative of himself as a regular guy, with apparent success as your post demonstrates.
Not doubting you, but any specific examples of him supporting monopoly?
Or are you saying the general environment of high finance supports this?
No doubt he had more money than he needed but if this is referring to his preference for coka-cola and apple stock / any stocks with the ability to set their own prices because of market dominance, I feel like that’s not a totally fair criticism.
Tons of evidence it’s all hiding in plan sight:
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/warren-buffett-americas-f...
Do you feel this way about all billionaires or is it something about Buffet?
I do feel exactly that with few exceptions.
Like he said, an American Hero
It's very obvious that some of the lesser plutocrats have public PR campaigns now. Zuck obviously got a stylist too.
I wonder how this will affect BRK-B, given that so many investors (or at least the "retail " ones) buy its shares with the assumption that they provide exposure to Buffett's strategy.
In any case, I hope Warren can experience not working at all in the few years he likely has left after being alive for over 1/3 of his country's existence!
BRK is now (since the last 10-20 years) large and diversified enough that it more or less tracks the S&P 500 and the overall stock market. There isn't some genius trading strategy in there. Buffett himself tells everyone who will listen to buy and hold a diversified index fund for a long period of time.
BRK is like a conservative S&P500. It offers enough diversification off the "total market" funds for me that I invest a small but material portion of my "safe money" with them.
Sort of like holding boring dividend stocks without the dividend.
BRK and VOO have a correlation of 0.7 over the past 5 years. That's high enough that they have been relatively similar, but not so high that I would really say it "tracks" it.
Of course, no one knows the future so who knows if this will continue.
I don't know the guy, but by all indications he is even-keeled, low-stress, conscientious but come what may. Given his nationality and net-worth, I'd wager that Warren is a centenarian in waiting, unless and until he chooses to invest in the afterlife. Whichever comes first.
Respect.
Last I heard he had a couple guys working for him who sound extremely smart and explained it’s almost impossible to beat the S&P but they try.
There's no Buffett's strategy. Market buys whatever Buffett's company bought. That's how he got unusual gains.
Moment of fame stretched over 60 year of clipping coupons off of that initial fame.
The thing that made it possible was that he was content with his performance and never tried to one up himself. He kept his fame and market interest in him simmering over six decades inatead burning out in one bright flash.
> There's no Buffett's strategy. Market buys whatever Buffett's company bought. That's how he got unusual gains.
That sure does trivialize him. If that was your goal, you nailed it.
I personally don’t think that’s a fair take, but I’ve no interest in trying to change your mind.
> That sure does trivialize him. If that was your goal, you nailed it.
Pretty much. I'm always interested what's left once I reject te ususal narratives that people keep repeating to each other. I find this kind of excercise insightful and satisfying.
While in every working thing there's myriad of significant details, the main engine of operation is usually just one usually quite straightforward thing. I like making attempts at recognizing those main things. I'm sometimes wrong but even when I am I find satisfaction that I tried instead just repeating some selection of what other people said.
I read somewhere that Bershire Hathaway had sort of finished it's mission. 40 years ago there were lots of large companies who were very 'inefficient' and BH would come along, invest a lot, and start demanding changes. Company performance would improve and BH would make big $$$$.
Now there are few of these and it is hard to do.
I don't know enough to know whether it is right or wrong. but I think that is what I read.
Isn't that the model of every private equity? It was always hard to do well.
Although it doesn't seem that way, there are lot of companies that have become large recently, it is best time ever historically for companies to be able to grow large quickly much more so than 50 years ago in the early days of BH.
There are 1000+ unicorns today, about 50 of the fortune 500 are founded > 2000, a large number of companies that have chosen to remain private with revenues in excess of >$10B like Stripe or SpaceX etc
While it is true that lot of the action has been in sectors BH has never been comfortable holding large assets in such as SaaS, new fin-tech(i.e. crypto etc), or gig econ(Airbnb/Uber etc), social media(tiktok et al.) etc, that doesn't mean the principles are no longer needed or there aren't opportunities to take stake in these now mature companies and drive value.
Well, many companies are still mispriced, but stock markets today look a lot more like voting machines than weighing machines - so it takes more time to be proven right (or wrong).
Berkshire had a pivot where, decades back, Munger convinced Buffett to switch from investing in bad companies at a great price to good companies at a good price. Their new strategy is still active.
That said, the turnaround 'mission' you mention about still happens, but is more associated with private equity than Berkshire.
Here is a fantastic farewell message that Seth Klarman wrote on Buffett's retirement for The Atlantic,
How Buffett did it?
https://web.archive.org/web/20250000000000*/https://www.thea...
That link isn't loading up for me.
Buffett's Alpha: http://docs.lhpedersen.com/BuffettsAlpha.pdf
tldr; he was leveraged with good stocks
I will never undertand this people that live all their life working, when they clearly have the chance to retire much sooner.
I will retire right away if I had 10 millions. Maybe 50 millions if I was younger than 40.
This is merely your failure to imagine it. Maybe they enjoy it, maybe they have a specific goal they want to achieve, have some sort of obsession, maybe they feel duty to all the people they lead and relie on them, think they are making the world better so they feel compelled to continue working, are mad with power and enjoy lording over other people. There are many many reasons why one would work after being financially secure, and they're all equally valid as a personal motivator.
And, anyways, I think you say this now, but if you were to get those 10 millions you would probably change your tune. A lot of people would find some other project to dedicate their energy. Especially the kind of people that make stuff happen.
It can also be as simple as finding meaning in the habit of work and the growth which may come with it. Nihilism and hedonism wear thin after a short while.
> sort of obsession
That doesn't sound very positive to me. Perhaps OP has a point
I am one of the person who, if they got 40 mil USD tomorrow, would just work much harder on stuff I like to work on (which is making open source software sustainable in robotics), because I would have to spend less time have to take care about the economics of daily life. I could get a chef to cook me personalized healthy meals. I could have a mini-gym at home (which is not that expensive to be honest).
but I could get a home near a major airport like 10 mins from SFO, and so with working out and eating consuming 4 hours and sleeping 6 hours a day and 2 hour of spouse time. I legit have 12 hours a day to work everyday. I could easily do that in a sustainable manner 6 days a week, and spending Sunday relaxing by helping out in my parent's farm and then relaxing in the evening before going back to work next week.
Seems like an ideal life for me. The only difference from today is the extra 3 hours I spend in traffic and an average 1 hour daily in running errands. And extra work on Saturday like fetching groceries, looking after my home, fixing stuff etc.
If I get money, I could save that 4 hour of my life and dedicate it to working on something I really like.
It's one out of a sea of options. Of course, not all are good and healthy. But some are.
once someone is on top, they almost never give it up. how often does the king abdicate without being so ill he can’t continue?
Don’t apply the morality of a worker to a top capitalist
Work life is quite a lot different for a working-stiff than it is for a CEO. In large part, their company is an extension of themselves. Work whatever hours you want to. Private plane to take you wherever you want to go for free, if you can come up with a work-related excuse to go there (with no need to justify not coming back for weeks). Multiple folks acting more-or-less as your personal assistants. An office bigger than your house, filled with anything you want in it, on the company's dime. A big pool of cash you can order the company to throw at whatever interests you. etc.
Based on this description, you could say that what the CEO does in no way resembles what real work looks like for 90% of the population. Which I think is true. It's a pity they make so much more than people who do actual work.
I doubt he cares that much about the company paying for things. Once you hit 10B+, all of that stuff is just noise.
He sat around talking to people, reading, betting on stocks/financial markets, playing games and occasionally buying a business.... that is many people's dream retirement.
Their work is their enjoyment. Buffett would've been investing even in "retirement," so to him, work and retirement are functionally the same.
This.
The work/retirement dichotomy is such a weird and peculiar artifact of the 1950s US middle-class nuclear-family milieu.
That's gone.
For the rest of us, it's just...live your life, until you don't.
(viz. Below the fold: "Buffett remains as chair...")
Can you imagine reading and researching the world on your retirement? Because that's what people like him do, except they mainly focus on 10-K statements. Those are genuinely interesting to read once you learn to skip boilerplate and go for the content.
He also seems to talk to a lot of people, and he has access to pretty much anyone given his stature. Imagine being passionate about business and then being able to spend every day talking to people about their businesses and their thoughts on business. I'm surprised he retired at all!
I would probably be Software Engineering even if my employer didn't pay me to. As evidence, note that it's new year's eve and I'm writing patches (and waiting for tests) during my holidays for someone else's FOSS project I'm contributing to :).
I my employer didn't pay me, I'd stop working on their projects. But in the meantime, I enjoy my profession (at least most of the time) and get paid. If I had enough money then I'd stop working on what my management wants and work on stuff that I want to work on. And I have to imagine that at this point, Buffet is also doing whatever he wants to.
Warren Buffett also retried at a younger age. In a 1969 letter to partners he wrote, “I intend to give all limited partners the required formal notice of my intention to retire”. But life had other plans…
I'm at that point now, debating when I'll retire. We only live once and I'm not sure if I should continue working. I've reached financial freedom at a pretty young age. It's a daily debate in my mind when to call it quits, but I've never not worked and it's difficult to make the change. What I'm missing in life is time and that's what work takes from me and is the driving force behind my desire to retire -- time to do other things in life.
If you don’t have family or kids do not stop working.
And if you do have kids, the most profitable thing for your wife to do upon learning you won't be working any longer would be to divorce you, take 50%, impute your income for child support calculation at what you were earning before (so every 5 years you owe your full pre-tax salary). That way their quality of life won't be impacted nearly as much.
So 8x your pre-tax salary (like 11 or 12x post tax) is gone right off the bat as soon as you retire.
I have a wife and two kids. That's one reason I still work (it's probably not a good example for the kids to see a father not working)
More broadly, I'd say if you don't have something to retire to (kids or otherwise), don't.
Yup, that’s how you end up dead very quickly.
I get you, but maybe you wouldn't be able to retire.
It was that quest for more that made them even get to that 10 or 50 million you talk about.
If they didn't have that personality for more, they likely would have stopped way sooner.
As a retired person I’ve always been curious about this. I questioned a friend who is multiple FU money rich. He said he just love his job, and he’s in a position to work the way he wants to work.
Not my cup of tea (and Die with Zero book explains the common sense on this) but I get why though. There is tons of status attached to it, lots of people don’t know what to do with themselves, a lot of identity ( especially in US) attached to the work.
For a lucky few of us, our job is something we might do unpaid if we had our needs addressed already. It's fun!
I like travel, I like relaxing at home. But I don't know if it's what I'd want to do all the time. I like having some pull, driving me towards a greater goal.
He's just wired differently. He spent his spare time reading financial statements.
You could argue he was retired and just continuing his hobby.
I agree with you. There are so many more worthwhile things to do than investing. I would also retire immediately with that kind of money and focus on creating real value in the world
That's a very selfish take.
For folks with the ability to make truckloads of money and then give it away to good causes, that is going to be the best choice v trying to add value in the world to make themselves feel better.
You don't need retirement-level money to create "real value in the world"...
allocating capital well provides significant value to the world. His style of investing specifically meant not pouring money into hype stocks and instead investing in companies that have sustainable business models.
Have you ever considered that some people enjoy investing?
Imagine if I said "there are so many more worthwhile things to do than painting" if some famous artist retired.
I totally get it. You need a purpose to be happy. If you enjoy your work and get a sense of fulfillment from it, why should you stop?
It provides purpose. Many people who retire early after doing all the random stuff they thought would be cool would likely find themselves isolated and decaying without purpose.
Retiring simply means doing something else. For him, whatever that was must have been less fun.
I get the sense that he arranged things so that he didn't have to work all that hard, he didn't do any short-term trading requiring constant attention and his work was done at his portfolio companies as soon as they had management he trusted.
I like to say if I could retire today; I would do the same thing I do now, just without a boss telling me to do it. I love what I do.
“Everything must end; meanwhile we must amuse ourselves.”
— Voltaire
When what you do depends on having power and you are above a certain level it's either up or down and out.
If you are really enjoying your life, why would you change it to something that you wouldn't enjoy?
We all die on the same order of magnitude.
We all have pleasure and suffering along the same couple of orders of magnitude.
In geological timespans, none of the fun you had will matter. Even a year from now, your memories are just wistful nostalgia (perhaps a psychological detriment!) And that's if your brain architecture is even set up to recall senses and events well (not everyone can).
My view is that the intellectual pursuit is more fulfilling than a world simulating traversal of novel experiences. Those neurons will turn to dust soon anyway, and it'll be like it never even happened. Why spend so much time fretting over it?
Spend time with family, but trying to rack up on restaurants and things and places and visits - meh, it's just simulation and squirts of neurotransmitters. Ephemeral. They leave no trace. It all fades to emptiness.
I'm not saying be completely stoic. But don't overdose on pleasure and thrill and novelty. Over indexing that way cuts down on impact.
Building never stops, even when you do. Laying a foundation shapes human behavior at scale. Leads to more shoulders being stood upon. Higher order effects.
Every single person I admire made an impact.
I'm not my genes that I was built from or the genes that I might pass down. I'm the ideas and deeds of a short life that hopefully left lasting impact and caused second order effects.
Hacker news moment. If you believe this, you are lost, but man. What a terrible take.
Build what? The next big ad serving platform? The next mass surveillance platform? New ways to squeeze money out of people? You’re right we all die so nothing matters, why would what you build matter more than the relationships you make, the good feelings you create? Build, but build art. Build something that will change peoples minds, make them feel good, make them want to change the world.
Do not conflate building something to make some guy richer, as just as or more important than spending time with family or creating true art.
Not the GP but I don’t think they were talking about “building something to make some guy richer” - they was were talking about building a life and relationships that positively impact the people they care about.
Berkshire stock could fall 99% and he would still have outperformed the S&P. Insane.
Interesting that he essentially did not outperform the S&P over the past 30 years: https://testfol.io/?s=jJ4P0GrZxLi
I wonder how much is due to the market becoming more efficient, vs Berkshire's size / market impact?
A very good (IMO) explanation of Warren Buffets success here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9owVrLm7mls
I always see fawning comments when it comes to Warren Buffet. I think people need to examine more closely what his portfolio companies do and how they’ve been successful. Some of them are genuinely positive stories. But in other places, the truth isn’t so pretty. Look up how rail workers are treated by BNSF, for example. Like many ultra wealthy people who are caught up in evaluating companies solely on financial grounds, Buffet ignores what the impact of his choices are. And let’s be real - there isn’t any “fair competition” in many parts of the American economy to fix these problems. The railways are especially problematic because the infrastructure they own creates monopolies in regions.
He’s no worse than CSX with public ownership. Rail workers are getting what they voted for - a dimishment of rights at the federal level and right to work crap that broke their union.
Don’t worship buffet, but study him. The Acquired podcast on him is a great jumping off point.
Why are you assuming that people aren't explicitly celebrating those negatives? Buffett is a capitalist, and the evils are part of the package. The majority of people here would do the same in a heartbeat to earn the same wealth and status.
Greeks had their Mythology with heroes and pseudo-Gods, we have oligarchs and pseudo-philantrops
In what world is he a “pseudo” philanthropist? He’s already given more than $60 Billion away and pledged to donate 99%+ of his wealth. He has also called for his class of ultra-wealthy to be taxed more
I can't help but wonder if Buffett's dividend focused strategy will continue to be a successful approach in the future. Buffett is no slouch, but seems to have fallen behind relatively unsophisticated investors like Musk and Zuckerburg as time went on and they focused on valuation more than returns/profit.
Buffet's strategy assumes a rational market, so I wouldn't expect it to work as well in an environment where stock market valuations are increasingly vibes-based and often wildly inflated by circumstances that should be illegal (like selling X to xAI to generate a voodoo valuation).
Arguably the entire market is heavily overvalued now, though, so while his strategies are probably no longer optimal, they'll probably continue to work out well enough at least until the next big correction.
“in the short run, the market is a voting machine… but in the long run, the market is a weighing machine.”
Ben Graham
It seems like something is broken since TSLA (for example) has been completely divorced from fundamentals since at least 2020. The richest man in the world has the vast majority of his net worth derived from vaporware and straight up fraud. Still wondering when the "weighing machine" kicks in.
The market can remain irrational for longer than you can remain solvent.
Unfortunately it's expensive to short Tesla because Elon and Peter Thiel don't allow their shares to be shorted. Add to that, it's part of the S&P 500. It's going to take a while but I foresee a lot of red for TSLA. We'll see what happens but TSLA is already revising their target of cars sold in Q4
investors have stopped looking at TSLA as a car company awhile ago so car sales will hardly move the price (downward)
Some people suggest this is a function of too much wealth centred in too few people, causing a high demand for assets. If that is true, maybe that is where we should focus?
Massive wealth inequality is certainly a factor, not just in this but the associated affordability situation being faced by the group of people whose wealth isn't being buoyed by the stock market.
But I don't know what we can do about it when government has been captured by people with vested interests in not fixing anything.
It feels like things have to get bad enough to get people to actually rise up. Not like, revolution or anything, but real protest (and enough political awakening to understand that they are being fed culture war bullshit to distract them from the class war they should be waging).
> relatively unsophisticated investors like Musk and Zuckerburg
They're sophisticated government contractors. They've insulated themselves from the wiles of the market.
Musk and Zuckerberg are primarily entrepreneurs, not investors.
I just asked ChatGPT what Warren Buffett's strategy is, and it said buying undervalued companies and holding for a long time. Is that true? I thought it's not a good idea to buy loser companies.
Undervalued, not underperforming. Companies that others overlook but have solid fundamentals and great strategy.
An undervalued company is one that everyone else thinks is a loser but actually isn't - if you can identify that (and maybe make some adjustments to it) you can make a lot of money pretty quickly.
If it's undervalued it should be worth more, no?
Is Intel undervalued? Should Intel be worth more? Intel is an example of a company that I had in mind.
He calls them "cigar butts." His analogy is that you collect enough of them, and you have a whole cigar.