Jason Zweig
Appearances
The Journal.
There Will Never Be Another Warren Buffett
And certainly he has spelled those principles out very clearly for anyone who wishes to follow them.
The Journal.
There Will Never Be Another Warren Buffett
If he's not, it's kind of hard to think of who his competition would be.
The Journal.
There Will Never Be Another Warren Buffett
What really makes Buffett so extraordinary is not just the degree of his outperformance, but the length of it. I mean, we're talking about somebody who made his first investment in... 1942. And so there are plenty of people who have better performance, better track records as investors over the past 10 years, the past 20 years, maybe even the past 25 years. But 60 years? Right. I don't think so.
The Journal.
There Will Never Be Another Warren Buffett
He bought, I think, three shares of what then was called Cities Service, which was an oil company. He recalls that his sister got nervous about I think when the price went down a few months later, so he sold it. And, you know, it went on to, you know, make thousands and thousands and thousands of percent, teaching him the lesson that, you know, selling too soon can be a huge mistake.
The Journal.
There Will Never Be Another Warren Buffett
In 1956, he started his own investment partnership out of his bedroom in his house in Omaha. And so he worked at home for much of the early years and he bought some of the smallest, most obscure stocks you could possibly imagine and just made a ton of money doing it.
The Journal.
There Will Never Be Another Warren Buffett
Yeah, and this is another example of how unusual Buffett was. Of course, today, Nobody would do it this way because you wouldn't need to because there are commercial databases and you could just ask AI to do it for you. But what Buffett did was he had these immense volumes of Moody's industrial manuals, which were these gigantic hardcover books.
The Journal.
There Will Never Be Another Warren Buffett
that consisted of thousands of pages of financial information on publicly traded stocks. And he started with A, and he read every page until he got to Z. Wow.
The Journal.
There Will Never Be Another Warren Buffett
And if he liked what he saw in combination with the financial information, he would buy the stock no matter how small it was or how long it took.
The Journal.
There Will Never Be Another Warren Buffett
Yeah, exactly. I once asked Buffett what he would have done if he hadn't become an investor. And he said, I probably would have become an investigative reporter.
The Journal.
There Will Never Be Another Warren Buffett
He bought much larger companies when they had temporarily fallen out of favor, like American Express, The Washington Post, which then was a major public company, Coca-Cola.
The Journal.
There Will Never Be Another Warren Buffett
A large part of Berkshire Hathaway's market value today consists of the private companies that Buffett bought. And that gave him the flexibility of buying in public markets when he felt stocks were cheap, but not having to when he felt they were overpriced. Then he could go to private markets and buy at a negotiated price rather than what he calls the auction price that exists in the stock market.
The Journal.
There Will Never Be Another Warren Buffett
You know, I think if you're an investor in Berkshire Hathaway, Probably not as significant as you might think. You know, the assets of the company are in place. The investments that Buffett has made over the years are part of the company's holdings. So it's going to run on autopilot based on the decisions he's made over the decades.
The Journal.
There Will Never Be Another Warren Buffett
I think his legacy is that he leaves a really clear roadmap that pretty much anybody could follow if they chose to on how to be a better investor. Ignore the short term fluctuations of the market. Focus on your own long term goals and the potential of the assets you hold to have long term growth. Try to take the other side of the emotions of the market.
The Journal.
There Will Never Be Another Warren Buffett
When the market is euphoric, you should be skeptical. When the market is fearful, you should be optimistic. And above all, you should be patient. And focus on the long run. And, you know, nobody has ever exemplified those principles better than Buffett. And I think he would probably hope that that would be his legacy.