Warren Buffett Speaks - Wit and Wisdom of the World's Greatest Investor
Summary
Lowe collected quotations from Buffett drawn from shareholder letters, annual meeting transcripts, interviews and speeches, and organised them by subject with brief connecting commentary. The categories cover his early life and Omaha, his views on business, his investment principles, his opinions on Wall Street, management, taxation, inheritance and philanthropy.
The book supplies the quotable Buffett rather than the analytical one. Familiar formulations appear here in their original context, including his remarks on the margin of safety, on the difference between price and value, on the institutional imperative, on why he prefers businesses that a fool could run, on the effect of costs and activity on investor returns, and on his intention not to leave large fortunes to his children.
Lowe's commentary is light and biographical rather than interpretive.
The limitation is straightforward. Buffett's shareholder letters are freely published and Lawrence Cunningham's arranged edition of them organises the same material with the reasoning attached. A quotation collection strips the argument from the conclusion, which suits browsing but not study. The book is also from 1997 and predates most of Berkshire's later acquisitions, its scale problems, and Buffett's later positions on technology holdings and on succession.
Key takeaways 7
- Buffett judges an investment by the business's economics over a decade rather than by the security's price behaviour.
- He prefers businesses with economics so favourable that competent management is not required for adequate results.
- Activity and cost, not market direction, account for most of the gap between market returns and investor returns.
- The institutional imperative pushes managers to imitate peers and to resist changing direction, and Buffett treats it as the main destroyer of corporate value.
- He argues that large inherited fortunes damage the recipients and that he intends to give his own away.
- Buffett attributes much of his own advantage to temperament rather than to intelligence or information.
- He has consistently argued that most investors should hold index funds because they will not beat the market after costs.
Who should read it
Readers who want Buffett's formulations to hand for reference, though the shareholder letters themselves are freely available and contain the reasoning.
About Janet Lowe
American financial journalist and biographer of Charlie Munger, Benjamin Graham, Warren Buffett and Bill Miller.
Damn Right! is the standard full-length life of Charlie Munger, built from interviews with Munger, his family and his partners, and the Graham volumes put writings and lectures that had gone out of print back in circulation. The books supply the biographical record behind quotations that circulate everywhere else without sources.
Where it sits in the reference 2
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