The Deals of Warren Buffett

Arnold, a British finance academic, examines Buffett's investments individually in chronological order, reconstructing the numbers, the reasoning and the outcome for each. The series runs across several volumes covering successive periods of the career.

The method is what distinguishes it. Rather than restating Buffett's principles, Arnold works through the actual transactions: the early partnership investments including Sanborn Map, Dempster Mill and American Express; the Berkshire textile purchase and why it was a mistake Buffett has acknowledged; See's Candies, which changed his approach by demonstrating what a business with pricing power and low reinvestment requirement is worth; the newspaper investments; GEICO; the insurance operations and the float they generated; and the later large positions.

For each he presents the financial position at the time, the price paid, the reasoning available from the letters and other sources, and the return realised, which allows a reader to see how the criteria were actually applied rather than how they are described.

The most instructive material is the evolution: Arnold shows the shift from Graham-style statistical bargains to paying up for business quality, and dates it to the Munger influence and specifically to See's.

Arnold is an academic writing from public sources rather than from access, so the reasoning attributed to Buffett is reconstructed. The reference has not verified all the specific figures. It is nonetheless one of the few Buffett books that works from transactions rather than from maxims.