America threw off a king and founded a republic. Equality is a founding value and one we still respect. A rich man keeping his habits despite his wealth, and doing so next to the rest of us, is a role model for other up and comers.
(The Romans had a similar thing about pastoral farmers. Every culture has its myth, and we like it when those in power try to live up to it.)
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.
Poor people should properly budget and cook at home to avoid staying poor
If you can afford to eat McDonald's nobody cares (well it's not healthy either but that's a different matter that doesn't really have to do with being poor or not)
You don’t have time to do those things if you are poor and working 2-3 jobs. Properly budgeting and analyzing costs takes a lot of time, and unexpected expenses and cost of living increases destroy your budget a lot more than McDonald’s.
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.
And this bit is tripe: “Buffett is the avatar of monopoly. This is a guy whose investments philosophy is literally that of a monopolist. I mean, he invented this sort of term, the economic ‘moat,’ that if you build a moat around your business, then it's going to be successful. I mean, this is the language of building monopoly power.” (Seeking moats isn’t monopolistic. It’s inherent to competition.)
He lives in the same home in Omaha that he had in the 60's. BH does not own any corporate jets but they do own NetJets that sells/leases fractional shares of their jet fleet of which Buffet uses for his travel.
What would warrant an exception? I generally don’t like billionaires either, but I wouldn’t put Buffet at the top of my shit list just for curating a public persona.
There are couple of artists for example that had managed to become near- or full billionaires. Of course I do not know the details but in my view this warrants an exception
Can’t even remember if Zuck testified before the Congress or Senate, but his super weird fucking haircut on that day is indelibly etched into my brain. So a stylist is probably a solid strategic choice for him.
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.
With $150 billion dollars he could have done a lot more than "argue for" changing taxation. If he had spent that money actively fighting for a better system, maybe that'd be worth something. To sit back on your billions and say "aw shucks, this really shouldn't be possible" is not much of an effort.
Edit: Some people seem to be misunderstanding me. I'm saying if he thought taxation was unequal or thought wealth inequality was a problem, he could have used his wealth specifically to fight against billionaires like himself, not just give money towards generic charitable causes.
It seems buffet has taken “the giving pledge” along with Bill Gates and others. “More than 99% of my wealth will go to philanthropy during my lifetime or at death.” - https://www.givingpledge.org/pledger/warren-buffett/
I was responding to a comment that defended Buffet by saying he "argued for changing complex and unfair taxation". I'm saying if you have billions that could be spent on taking tangible action to change such taxation, simply "arguing for" changing it is not very impressive.
> if you have billions that could be spent on taking tangible action to change such taxation
Do you have evidence he didn’t try? He’s been a prolific (albeit measured) donor to candidates who have pushed for this [1].
From what I can tell, Buffett enjoyed making money. He outsourced his philanthropy to Bill & Melinda Gates. Their focus has tended to be global poverty.
He turned 95 years old on August 30. He was 75 when he began giving away his fortune, announcing plans in June 2006 to give away the bulk of his wealth to five foundations, primarily the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He changed his will in 2024, designating 99.5% of his remaining fortune after his death to a charitable trust overseen by his three children and also announcing in June 2024 that donations to the Gates Foundation would cease upon his death.
Just think, if that charitable trust is structured correctly, it could be used to pay a modest believable "administration" salary to many many generations of offspring all while paying out some token pittances to make the whole thing seem genuine.
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.
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.
Hey, with all the de-industrializing Europe has been doing, everything is now made in China and the only decision western civilization has to make is how do we equally distribute those goods. I mean why do absolutely anything if they just do it China? You can just demand your share of the goods as a human right. They can't shut you down, you're the heroic consumer after all without which the economy wouldn't exist. /s
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.
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.
What’s the counter-factual here? Coca Cola not allowed to exist? Plastic not a permissible material for soft drink bottles? Nobody allowed to drink soft drink? Companies forced to clean the streets?
I dislike plastic pollution as much as you do, but your elected representatives have more responsibility here than Buffett.
Imagine what a world we would live in if people held themselves to the same standard they hold billionaires to. After all, coca-cola would change their ways pretty quickly if people stopped buying things over the issue.
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.
Have you ever read Elon's wiki? Or any other individual rich enough to curate whatever views they choose?
Warren buffet did good and he came up with a winning strategy. Momentum was ultimately his friend and what drove his success. When ETFs are great today and their popularity largely because of Warren, I think a lot of what's increasingly becoming obviously wrong with the markets ties back to the original strategy behind ETFs.
There's no more self selection or focus on fundamentals. All pensions are now exposed and regular contributors to the markets, so winner and losing picking doesn't really exist in the same way and performance is no longer tied to reality. I dread what that means as populations stagnant since it puts some risk on future pensions and their somewhat ponzi-esque structure.
All the pessimistic rants aside - it's insane to refer me to a billionaire's wiki as an attempt to get to know them. I largely look at people based on how they might treat family, friends, strangers, etc. In that regard, I'm mixed.
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
We should never idolize a person (in my opinion). Here are some things Buffet has done that I admire (notice that phrasing):
- He consistently communicated with shareholders of Berkshire in a straight-forward and transparent way in his letters and annual reports. If you read these documents, I believe that you will have a solid understanding of how he built Berkshire.
- He maintained a disciplined approach to investing and managing risk over 60+ years.
- He still lives in the same home he bought when he was 28 years old.
Our society has become moralistic. It's so much more useful to identify behaviors to learn from - either to emulate or to avoid - than to debate whether various public figures are good or bad people.
That said, it makes me a little sad that we've read the last of his annual letters.
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 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.
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.
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.
There is and it’s found in float, leverage and low-volatility assets [1].
If you look at what he does, that becomes clear. If you only pay attention to how people talk about him on the internet, you’ll be misled into seeing trend following.
I know one anecdote is not data, but his investment in BYD all the way back in 2008 does counter that viewpoint somewhat - his investment success in the BYD case isn’t from other investors following him in, it’s from him identifying BYD as a successful company far before any other major investors did.
> 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.
That wasn't their main thing. The main one was to buy stocks or companies for less than they were worth, either because the market mispriced them or because company owners wanted to retire and sell to Berkshire. They also were big into insurance float which is getting insurance premium money that doesn't have to be paid out for a while which provides a kind of free leverage. Buffett did a lot of other things too.
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.
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.
They also have a history of buying good private companies at a good price and then let the management keep cooking. This is especially relevant to family businesses that want liquidity for the heirs and good long-term (indefinite) stewardship rather than selling to some PE vulture that will destroy their legacy.
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).
did warren buffets success help america or just his shareholders? How does the $350 billion cash concentration affect the economy and his businesses? I would think it would be better served redistributing it back into the economy to create opportunities for working class, so they can make a living wage, vs having multiple jobs and no savings or safety net.
I don't think he's a hero, particularly, but he also does not strike me as a villain like some of the modern day billionaires either. I read a biography of him and he seems like an interesting guy. I don't think the 'humble lifestyle' thing was a schtick, like some suggest. I mean he mostly lived in Nebraska... give me a tiny fraction of his wealth and I would have taken right off out of Nebraska as the first thing I did, to go live somewhere warm and sunny.
He also seemed a bit more aware of how much power money can translate into, and it seems he kind of stuck to "being rich" rather than shooting for "rich and also politically powerful" (although I'm sure there are probably a few exceptions).
Compare his investment in the Washington Post with Bezos'. Buffett actually made money off it, and kept his hands off the direction of the paper. We all saw how much Bezos started leaning on it - which has had the effect of shedding subscribers as no one trusts it any more, and it's not attracting new readers of... the Fox News persuasion I guess we can call it.
It also seems he mostly stuck to what he knows in terms of kind of boring investments rather than flashy rockets and other showy things.
And of course he's been good with giving his money away and convincing others to do likewise.
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.
When you are the boss work is a lot less unpleasant than when you are an employee. When you are at the highest level in the organization and also the major shareholder, you can shape your work environment and and workday in a way that you like it.
He worked for 60 years because he liked doing it, and as he became more successful, the job just getting more pleasant for him.
I cannot speak for him but from reading his annual reports and various writings and listening to the occasional interview, it seems that he enjoyed working much more than anything he would do while being retired.
You can call this great american work ethic, and that is part of it, but the other part of it is that when you are the boss you can kind of remove most unpleasant parts of your job and leave only the parts that are the most fun and interesting for you.
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!
If your number is on the order of $10 million, I suspect that no, you wouldn't, because you haven't thought hard enough about retirement and how to achieve and keep it with a satisfying lifestyle to realize that you don't need nearly so much (or at least most people, maybe you have a need for very fancy things, I won't judge). And requiring $50 million at a younger age? What's the logic in that? The younger you are the lower you can set your number, because if you end up being wrong either about the feasibility or about your mental state from not having a job, you still have time to fix things or even pivot to a new career. (You also get more years of compound interest.) I quit my BigCo job 5 years ago just before my 30th birthday with ~$500k across VFIAX and VGT, I've been "retired" since and that amount has grown considerably. I'm still quite happy not working for someone, while still being reasonably confident I could get a programming job again if a need or desire arose, and there's always the possibility of going a bit crazy and burning through it all to self-fund hiring some employees of my own to make a go at a business.
It's not hard for me to understand why people keep working even if I'm not and don't want to be that way. There are so many reasons, I'll list a few, some work just as well even for people who are working despite having "enough", whatever that means. Some people just really like having a job, or think of it as a moral duty (and themselves as doing good by fulfilling that obligation), or some get their self-worth from having a job, or some like being occupied by work when they know that without it they'd just rot. Some like the social company. Many actually like their work a lot more than they dislike it and pay above some threshold is just "nice". If you're particularly good at your job, too, there's a lot of joy in doing things you're good at, no matter what kind of job it is. Some have expensive tastes or have made expensive compromises or have fallen on expensive bad luck that all can need ongoing funding. Some want to make or support things and need capital to do so. Some just see life as a game, and money going up is their source of happiness and sign of winning. There's all sorts of minds and preferences in this world.
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.
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 likely at least 8x your pre-tax salary (like 11 or 12x post tax) is gone right off the bat as soon as you retire. So if you are retiring before age 40 basically all of your wealth will vaporize as soon as the mother of your children realizes they can basically take the entire wealth through a mixture of divorce, child support, and alimony and they must act fast before the imputed income calculation drops.
You could stop working and lie for 5 years claiming you are employed and doing work stuff. Then the risk of this is over. But you should definitely have a prenup or a postnup if this isn’t possible.
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.
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…
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 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.
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 will never undertand this people that live all their life working, when they clearly have the chance to retire much sooner.
Some people just love what they do. In addition to people loving what they do, there are also people who don't like to do nothing: travelling, reading, sipping pina coladas in the pool in Florida, painting, playing videogames all day long etc. is not for everyone.
And there are even people who fit both: they love what they do and they have moreover absolutely no interest in retiring and "doing nothing".
EDIT: also some people are action junkies that must be working. A friend of mine is working a full-time regular job and is also a voluntary firefighter, responding to emergencies during week-ends etc. He doesn't do it for the little additional money it brings: he does it because he loves to be helpful.
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.
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.
Probably a bit of both. Berkshire's size means he was limited to the largest companies which are pretty well analysed.
During that period he did some different things which some of his personal money like buying stock in Dae Han Flour Mills, a Korean flour miller that was like 2 times earnings in 2003 but was probably too small a position to make sense for Berkshire. (https://www.netnethunter.com/warren-buffett-cheap-stock-pick...)
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.
Probably the best thing about Buffett was his admission of his shortcomings - he wasn't a manager, or adminstrator, of companies - he thought he could do it, blew it, and learnt from the experience.
He was a damned fine investor, a very good eye for a bargain (that would later turn into a goldmine).
I get that people have opinions on that, but I'm not too fussed about the player, when it's the game that they should be focussed on.
It's not possible to become a billionaire with a B without fucking over a lot of people, but for a billionaire he isn't so bad. If we can't get rid of billionaires the next best thing is to hope they are more like Buffett and less like Musk or Thiel or Trump...
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.
The public stuff, sure, in the short term. The wholly-owned stuff, however, is pure private equity: their cash flows should cash flow irrespective of financing conditions.
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).
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 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.
> what Warren Buffett's strategy is, and it said buying undervalued companies and holding for a long time
No. It’s cheap leverage applied to low-volatility assets bought for a fair price [1]. (Munger got him off the ‘cigarette butt’ strategy of buying on the cheap.)
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.
America threw off a king and founded a republic. Equality is a founding value and one we still respect. A rich man keeping his habits despite his wealth, and doing so next to the rest of us, is a role model for other up and comers.
(The Romans had a similar thing about pastoral farmers. Every culture has its myth, and we like it when those in power try to live up to it.)
But I agree with the person suggesting not diluting the word.
Combined that with his "frugal" and "creature of habit" reputations, that might explain is morning routine.
We've got people drinking 600 calorie frappucinos before they touch a bite of food.
If you can afford to eat McDonald's nobody cares (well it's not healthy either but that's a different matter that doesn't really have to do with being poor or not)
I know multiple folks who did this. Poor people aren’t mentally deficient. (Often they’re sturdier than those of us who grew up comfortably enough.)
> unexpected expenses and cost of living increases destroy your budget a lot more than McDonald’s
This is correct. But it’s true for most Americans when we consider medical debt.
Budgeting and analyzing spending and risk is still sensible.
For family? Not really
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.
He remained a Nazi member well into the 1950s, which I find truly bizzare.
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.
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.
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/warren-buffett-americas-f...
And this bit is tripe: “Buffett is the avatar of monopoly. This is a guy whose investments philosophy is literally that of a monopolist. I mean, he invented this sort of term, the economic ‘moat,’ that if you build a moat around your business, then it's going to be successful. I mean, this is the language of building monopoly power.” (Seeking moats isn’t monopolistic. It’s inherent to competition.)
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.
Edit: Some people seem to be misunderstanding me. I'm saying if he thought taxation was unequal or thought wealth inequality was a problem, he could have used his wealth specifically to fight against billionaires like himself, not just give money towards generic charitable causes.
Because the money isn’t being spent on your pet issue it’s being mis-spent?
Do you have evidence he didn’t try? He’s been a prolific (albeit measured) donor to candidates who have pushed for this [1].
From what I can tell, Buffett enjoyed making money. He outsourced his philanthropy to Bill & Melinda Gates. Their focus has tended to be global poverty.
[1] https://www.opensecrets.org/search?order=desc&q=warren+buffe...
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/buffett-kin...
if you want to know what his kids are up to.
Life imitates art, I suppose.
https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995
The idea that humans have destroyed the planet is quite silly.
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.
I dislike plastic pollution as much as you do, but your elected representatives have more responsibility here than Buffett.
Does Coca Cola make plastic bottles? I thought their whole deal is they sell syrup to local bottlers.
Idk how that can be considered a “life centered around greed”
Is this Stockholm Syndrome?
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.
Warren buffet did good and he came up with a winning strategy. Momentum was ultimately his friend and what drove his success. When ETFs are great today and their popularity largely because of Warren, I think a lot of what's increasingly becoming obviously wrong with the markets ties back to the original strategy behind ETFs.
There's no more self selection or focus on fundamentals. All pensions are now exposed and regular contributors to the markets, so winner and losing picking doesn't really exist in the same way and performance is no longer tied to reality. I dread what that means as populations stagnant since it puts some risk on future pensions and their somewhat ponzi-esque structure.
All the pessimistic rants aside - it's insane to refer me to a billionaire's wiki as an attempt to get to know them. I largely look at people based on how they might treat family, friends, strangers, etc. In that regard, I'm mixed.
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.
That said, it makes me a little sad that we've read the last of his annual letters.
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!
Of course, no one knows the future so who knows if this will continue.
Sort of like holding boring dividend stocks without the dividend.
Respect.
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 is and it’s found in float, leverage and low-volatility assets [1].
If you look at what he does, that becomes clear. If you only pay attention to how people talk about him on the internet, you’ll be misled into seeing trend following.
[1] https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w19681/w196...
I know one anecdote is not data, but his investment in BYD all the way back in 2008 does counter that viewpoint somewhat - his investment success in the BYD case isn’t from other investors following him in, it’s from him identifying BYD as a successful company far before any other major investors did.
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.
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.
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.
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.
That said, the turnaround 'mission' you mention about still happens, but is more associated with private equity than Berkshire.
How Buffett did it?
https://web.archive.org/web/20250000000000*/https://www.thea...
tldr; he was leveraged with good stocks
He also seemed a bit more aware of how much power money can translate into, and it seems he kind of stuck to "being rich" rather than shooting for "rich and also politically powerful" (although I'm sure there are probably a few exceptions).
Compare his investment in the Washington Post with Bezos'. Buffett actually made money off it, and kept his hands off the direction of the paper. We all saw how much Bezos started leaning on it - which has had the effect of shedding subscribers as no one trusts it any more, and it's not attracting new readers of... the Fox News persuasion I guess we can call it.
It also seems he mostly stuck to what he knows in terms of kind of boring investments rather than flashy rockets and other showy things.
And of course he's been good with giving his money away and convincing others to do likewise.
I will retire right away if I had 10 millions. Maybe 50 millions if I was younger than 40.
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.
That doesn't sound very positive to me. Perhaps OP has a point
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.
Don’t apply the morality of a worker to a top capitalist
I’d wager you can say this about most jobs. The anomaly is butt-in-seats office jobs.
He worked for 60 years because he liked doing it, and as he became more successful, the job just getting more pleasant for him.
I cannot speak for him but from reading his annual reports and various writings and listening to the occasional interview, it seems that he enjoyed working much more than anything he would do while being retired.
You can call this great american work ethic, and that is part of it, but the other part of it is that when you are the boss you can kind of remove most unpleasant parts of your job and leave only the parts that are the most fun and interesting for you.
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...")
It's not hard for me to understand why people keep working even if I'm not and don't want to be that way. There are so many reasons, I'll list a few, some work just as well even for people who are working despite having "enough", whatever that means. Some people just really like having a job, or think of it as a moral duty (and themselves as doing good by fulfilling that obligation), or some get their self-worth from having a job, or some like being occupied by work when they know that without it they'd just rot. Some like the social company. Many actually like their work a lot more than they dislike it and pay above some threshold is just "nice". If you're particularly good at your job, too, there's a lot of joy in doing things you're good at, no matter what kind of job it is. Some have expensive tastes or have made expensive compromises or have fallen on expensive bad luck that all can need ongoing funding. Some want to make or support things and need capital to do so. Some just see life as a game, and money going up is their source of happiness and sign of winning. There's all sorts of minds and preferences in this world.
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.
To some people, their careers are interesting in and of itself, beyond money.
This applies to many professions: scientists, CEOs, writers, painters.
So likely at least 8x your pre-tax salary (like 11 or 12x post tax) is gone right off the bat as soon as you retire. So if you are retiring before age 40 basically all of your wealth will vaporize as soon as the mother of your children realizes they can basically take the entire wealth through a mixture of divorce, child support, and alimony and they must act fast before the imputed income calculation drops.
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.
You could argue he was retired and just continuing his hobby.
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.
— Voltaire
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 personally realized that I got bored of solo sized projects. It’s a lot more fun working with other really smart, motivated people.
Some people just love what they do. In addition to people loving what they do, there are also people who don't like to do nothing: travelling, reading, sipping pina coladas in the pool in Florida, painting, playing videogames all day long etc. is not for everyone.
And there are even people who fit both: they love what they do and they have moreover absolutely no interest in retiring and "doing nothing".
EDIT: also some people are action junkies that must be working. A friend of mine is working a full-time regular job and is also a voluntary firefighter, responding to emergencies during week-ends etc. He doesn't do it for the little additional money it brings: he does it because he loves to be helpful.
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.
Imagine if I said "there are so many more worthwhile things to do than painting" if some famous artist retired.
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.
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.
I wonder how much is due to the market becoming more efficient, vs Berkshire's size / market impact?
During that period he did some different things which some of his personal money like buying stock in Dae Han Flour Mills, a Korean flour miller that was like 2 times earnings in 2003 but was probably too small a position to make sense for Berkshire. (https://www.netnethunter.com/warren-buffett-cheap-stock-pick...)
Don’t worship buffet, but study him. The Acquired podcast on him is a great jumping off point.
He was a damned fine investor, a very good eye for a bargain (that would later turn into a goldmine).
I get that people have opinions on that, but I'm not too fussed about the player, when it's the game that they should be focussed on.
This is an article of faith for a lot of people, and I respect it (even if I disagree).
I’d encourage you to see Buffett’s relationship with Kay Graham. He’s definitely not cut from the usual cloth.
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.
The public stuff, sure, in the short term. The wholly-owned stuff, however, is pure private equity: their cash flows should cash flow irrespective of financing conditions.
Ben Graham
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).
They're sophisticated government contractors. They've insulated themselves from the wiles of the market.
Please don’t do this.
> what Warren Buffett's strategy is, and it said buying undervalued companies and holding for a long time
No. It’s cheap leverage applied to low-volatility assets bought for a fair price [1]. (Munger got him off the ‘cigarette butt’ strategy of buying on the cheap.)
[1] https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w19681/w196...