Warren Buffett always wanted to make money. As a child growing up in Omaha, Nebraska, he traded Coca-Cola and chewing gum with other children, sold stamps and golf balls to adults, and worked in his father's grocery store.
But in April 1942, at the age of 11, he bought his first stock, three shares of the utility company Cities Services, and his career as an investor took off, according to stock analysts. As Alex W. Morris explains: “Buffett and Munger Unscripted: 30 Years of Investing and Business Insights from Berkshire Hathaway’s Annual Shareholders Meeting.” (Harriman House).
“Much of what I learned about investing and business came from Buffett and Munger,” he writes. “For that, I will be forever grateful.”
Fast forward through life and Buffett, now 94 years old, is the eighth richest man in the world, but it's been quite a journey.
Buffett began buying shares in Berkshire Hathaway, a major holding company, in 1962 and took control of the business three years later.
Meanwhile, Charlie Munger joined management as vice chairman in 1978.
For decades, the company's annual general meeting (AGM) in Omaha has become a must-see event, as investors and analysts ask questions of the pair, seeking to uncover their investment secrets and strategies. .
But unless you were present in person, you could only access what people remembered and reported. “One of the most prestigious events in the financial world, Berkshire Hathaway's annual meeting, has long been the preserve of a relatively small group,” Norris wrote.
But in 2018, Berkshire released its archives of all shareholder meetings dating back to 1994, at which point Mr. Morris said he had the “difficult task of researching hundreds of hours of video and more than 1,700 questions from attendees.” ” and a book was created based on it. .
“Buffett and Munger's answers are a treasure trove of investment and business wisdom,” he writes. “The goal of this book is to unlock that treasure trove and make it accessible to everyone.”
For the most part, Buffett and Munger's success has come from intuition, Buffett said, and the key is recognizing the right investments when markets are volatile.
“Over time, markets produce wild things,” he said at a rally in 2000. “The trick is to take advantage of one of these wild things and not get carried away when other wild things happen, because wild things create their own truth for a while.”
To succeed in investing, it is important to learn from your own experiences, both good and bad.
“What you knew before is never enough [in investing]” Munger said at the 2018 meeting. “If you don't learn how to constantly revise and improve your previous conclusions, you're like someone walking on one leg in an ass-kicking contest.'' Wake up every morning and go to bed that night a little smarter than when you woke up.'' “We must strive to do so,” he says.
There are certain investments that Mr. Buffett and Mr. Munger never touch – like gold.
“If you owned all the gold in the world, you could get a ladder and climb on top of it and think you were king of the world. Stroke it, polish it, stare at it. You can do that, but it won't do anything,” Buffett said. “When you buy it, all you're doing is, again, expecting someone to pay more to own something you can't do anything with.”
Munger agreed. “[It’s like] “These are people who think they can protect themselves by buying a picture of a soup can,” he said. “I don't recommend that either.”
The book also functions as a compendium of the past 30 years of global financial history, with the two ruminating on issues that have come and gone, such as the “Y2K problem” at the turn of the millennium. do.
“It's interesting that a bunch of people with IQs of 160 can come together and cause problems like this, which is why we stick to simple things,” Buffett said in 1998.
However, they didn't always get it right. In 2000, Buffett told a shareholder meeting that while the Internet was “great” for society, it was “a net negative for capitalists” in that it was expected to reduce profitability and increase costs for many companies. Ta. Munger agreed.
“So you can be happy that the evolution of a species has a negative impact on the future of the economy,” he added. It is clear that the Internet has brought untold wealth to investors.
Despite this, the two men were successful in investing and amassed large personal fortunes.
In November 2024, Forbes magazine estimated Mr. Buffett's net worth at $149.7 billion, and when Mr. Munger died in November 2023 at age 99, his fortune was $2.6 billion, but he owned hospitals, universities, It had donated more than $550 million to other institutions.
Warren Buffett, now 94 years old, remains one of the most respected and successful investors in financial history.
What's his secret? “I have a friend who says, 'The first rule of fishing is to fish where the fish are,'” he says. “The second rule of fishing is to never forget the first rule.
“We’re good at fishing where the fish are.”
