Author Topic: Buffett: The Making of An American Capitalist  (Read 1780 times)

hodedofome

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Buffett: The Making of An American Capitalist
« on: February 19, 2015, 09:33:18 AM »
Buffett is one of the most incredible people of our lifetime. Before him people would have looked to JP Morgan or John D Rockefeller or Andrew Carnegie as sort of the same type in society. This book is not an official biography, as Buffett told Roger Lowenstein, the auther, "I won't help you but I won't interfere either."

The best part of the book, at least for me, was what he did before he was 30, not what he did after. Most people heard of Buffett after he was in his 50s, but his developing years are the most interesting. Consider this:

1) He was fascinated with numbers as a kid, and would play around with actuarial tables and compound interest. He'd play around with odds of all sorts of things.

2) He was fascinated with businesses and began buying candy and soft drinks in bulk at the store and sell it door to door for a profit. In his teens he was running legitimate businesses.

3) By the time he graduated high school, he had read over 100 business and investing books.

4) He was bored in college because he knew more than his professors.

5) As a young man he had no problems approaching the CEO of a business to ask him how they made money and how the business worked.

6) I don't remember the exact number, but he graduated college worth at least $100k in today's money. He saved every penny of his earnings since he was a kid, kept a ledger, and was convinced he would be very, very rich later on in life. He wanted to be a millionaire (in 1950s dollars) in his 30s.

7) By the time he had started his investment partnership, he had read every financial and annual report of every stock trading on the stock exchange. There is literally no stock you can throw at him, that he doesn't already know more than you do about it.

8) He can do complex math and finance calculations in his head. What takes a team of quants banging around on a calculator, he can do in his mind in a few seconds.

9) In college, people were so fascinated by his knowledge that people would just sit around him and listen to him talk about investing, business and economics.

10) He has a photographic memory. If you give him some numbers from a balance sheet from 2 years ago and you got the number wrong, he'll correct you from memory. Truly remarkable.

11) He reads hundreds of pages of material every day. Most of his day is spent reading and thinking, not talking to people.

I could go on, but really he's just a fascinating, unique individual. It is no accident he's one of the most successful and wealthy person that we've ever come across. Though none of us are like him, there's still things we can learn from him. It's an entertaining and educating book for sure.

Note: Don't go thinking you can read this book and unlock the secrets of being the next billionaire investor. But you can get some great ideas for investing, running a business, or generally just performing at a very high level no matter what you're doing.

Lyssa

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Re: Buffett: The Making of An American Capitalist
« Reply #1 on: February 19, 2015, 09:56:54 AM »
I liked the book for the same reason. Don't miss 'The Snowball' which is more detailed and covers more ground regarding what weaknesses he grew out of and how. It also corrects some myths included in the earlier biography. For example him using a spare drawer as a cradle for his first child is true but only out of necessity for a few days. Kid did get a cradle once they got around buying one. I also liked the description of and anecdotes about Charlie Munger.