The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America

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These essays should be compulsory reading for company directors, and CEOs who prefer to cook the books rather than produce tangible profits. They would learn something from Buffet and Charlie Munger's integrity, and corporate America would be the better for it. When we own portions of outstanding businesses with outstanding managements, our favourite holding period is forever Berkshire Hathaway, принципам и методами увеличения капитала, предупреждения и минимизации потерь, и немало пишет о подходах к управлению, корпоративных ценностях, репутации, о высоких стандартах финансового и бухгалтерского менеджмента, о взглядах на налогообложения и современных стандартах аудиторских компаний и о других не менее важных темах и вопросах.

The professionals however face a problem; can you imagine an investment consultant telling clients year-after-year, to keep adding to an index fund replicating the S&P 500?For a terrific discussion of the mutual fund business, read John Bogle’s Common Sense on Mutual Funds It is, however, a book for those who are interested in learning from one of the most successful investors of all time. With regard to other sources, I also highly recommend these: Alice Schroeder’s The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life, Roger Lowenstein’s Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist, and Tren Griffin’s Charlie Munger: The Complete Investor. The book for anyone who is interested in learning from one of the most successful investors in history. The first section, on investing, includes some of Buffett’s most famous essays, such as “ The Superinvestors of Graham-and-Doddsville” and “How Inflation Swindles the Equity Investor” In these essays, Buffett lays out his investment philosophy and discusses the principles that have guided his successful investing career.

It provides practical principles about sound investment thinking and opens up a path into the mind of a common-sense investor. I would consider this as a must-read for any business student. According to Buffett, the best book collating his philosophy is The Essays of Warren Buffett by Lawrence A. Cunningham, the internationally renowned scholar and expert on Buffett and Berkshire. Through many updated editions dating to 1997, The Essays is the definitive account of Buffett's approach to investing and management, consisting of a carefully curated and thematically organized compendium of Buffett's original annual letters, along with Cunningham's priceless commentaries. For all of you investors who want to invest like Warren Buffett - that is, successfully - this is what you really want to read. There are a large and growing number of books out there that will claim to make you think/act/be like Buffett; here you can actually read his thoughts. As WB has often said, go to the source material (not the analyst reports, etc.) to make your judgments, and that is true in studying Buffett as well. There are many books and articles printed that can and do change a persons perspective and understanding of the world that we live in, and there are others that will promise this and rarely deliver. The Essays of Warren Buffett is not one of those books and could not be even considered to sit with inside this realm. One of the strengths of this book is the way in which it emphasizes the importance of investing for the long-term. Buffett's investment philosophy is grounded in the idea of value investing, which involves looking for companies with strong fundamentals that are trading at a discount to their intrinsic value. The book provides numerous examples of how Buffett has successfully implemented this approach over the years, and it is clear that his strategies have been highly effective.I tend to think that the reason most people in the world cannot succeed is not that they are not smart enough. It may often be that they are not patient enough. Even if we do things the right way, it may take some time to get the right results. On the other hand, if you are a know-something investor, able to understand business economics and to find five to ten sensibly- priced companies that possess important long-term competitive ad- vantages, conventional diversification makes no sense for you. It is apt simply to hurt your results and increase your risk. I cannot understand why an investor of that sort elects to put money into a business that is his 20th favorite rather than simply adding that money to his top choices-the businesses he understands best and that present the least risk, along with the greatest profit potential. In the words of the prophet Mae West: "Too much of a good thing can be wonderful." Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.

Bosses also delegate decision-making responsibility to their employees. Employees do not ask their boss what they should do; instead, they make their own choices. Employees develop this ability through experimenting with which decisions are good and which are not (Mooers,2020). Of special interest to me is Buffett’s response — in the last essay — to a concern that many Berkshire shareholders have had in recent years: “What will happen if he begins to fade and, if so, how will the board handle it?” His reassurance is that the board will — as always —“do what’s right for the shareholders.”

Pg 54: we give our managers simple mandates: run it like you own 100% of it (and the only asset you own) and as if it were to last a century. Also don't let accounting get in the way of sound business judgment. Make this book a priority read for you and anyone else you care for. Not because you can become a great investor, but because it will show you what you can achieve through careful and considered focus. These essays introduce us to Buffett's way of thinking and doing business. There's a lot to learn from both aspects. Some of the book is rather technical, but most is straightforward enough, and I found many places where he made me think. I think our world at many levels- individual, corporate, government would be better if we adopted many of Buffett's ideas. Like I said – I’ve written quite a few different summaries on a lot of these chapters, and I’ve even skipped some really good ones so I wasn’t essentially rewriting the book, but I’ve narrowed my list down to my Top 5 chapters in The Essays of Warren Buffett for our beginner investor: