There are many books about Warren Buffett. But this is the best one to read as the words are from Warren Buffett himself with excellent editing by the author. It has lot of insights and fun to read.

Crazyman's Economics

Warren Buffet is a true success story when it comes to American entrepreneurs. If you follow his advice, your chances of making money in the market will increase, but you're still gambling on a game of chance. Buffett himself admits that the greater the motion, the smaller the return to the investor.

In the end, we should celebrate Buffett's success and his willingness to share his advice. But please remember, that Buffett's advice will not make you any richer than a book on basketball by Michael Jordan will make you a hall-of fame basketball player.

This book provides such simple, common sense advice you read it and think to yourself: "I know that, so why don't I do it?" Distractions, impatience and emotions represent the three challenges most investors and managers will face on a regular basis, Warren Buffett seems to have a way of drilling down to what's most important in the decision making process, and he provides blazingly clear and simple insight on how to create superior value, both for your company and through your investments.

The best book on investment ever. Had a lot of humour as well as a great education on investments. Very simple, easy to read and understand. It is also a combination of Fisher and Benjamin Graham.

What can I say except for the book is by god himself. It is an easy and interesting read. highly recommended to all those who want to get an idea on how to invest in stocks successfully!

I recently readed Buffet's biography where I firstly get a glance on his investment philosophy. Then I read this essays extracted from his Berkshire's annual reports to the shareholders and was delighted to find such a refreshing view on investment and business economics. His approach is simple and he share his views on common terms that an average person will understand.

This collection is awesome, as every serious investor knows by now. Cunningham and Buffett just published a new edition in May 2008, The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America, Second Edition, which made its debut at the Berkshire Annual Meeting today. I've just skimmed through this "second edition," which is also on amazon at the foregoing link, and it is even more amazing! Fans will want to have copies of each in their libraries. The collections are the only complete statement of Buffett's business and investment philosophy--as he has explained it. They are expertly assembled by Cunningham.

this book realy gives insight into investing and into warren buffets mind. A great gift for yourself or others.

Given Warren Buffett's candid and witty writing style, I don't understand why one would rather read those lousy interpretation of WB's shareholders' letters than read the original shareholders' letters.

But, if you want to get the gem of those shareholders' letters directly, you must read this excellent collection of essays. The editor does a great job in collecting and organizing WB's letters in a way that readers can more easily come to understand WB's investment philosophy in his own words.

Anyway, you've got to go to Berkshire Hathaway's website to read the original. I'm sure you will enjoy it.

It is not necessary to explain Mr. Buffett's bona fides. If you know enough to be looking at his book then you probably already acknowledge him as the greatest investor of our time. Few men can claim that their record of achievement has served to prove so many basic principles while also disproving so much academic babble about their field. There are many individual paragraphs that are worth the price of the book by themselves. When you consider all the wisdom contained then this collection of writings is probably the best educational value you will ever see offered.

This is a good book. However, as a long time follower of Warren Buffett (Warren Buffett and Tao Te Ching: A Modern Investor and an Age-Old Philosophy), I think that Warren Buffett achieves such a huge success not because he is smarter than other businessmen/investors, but because he is different from them. For example, he will not sell some stocks he bought for his insurance company even if they became far overpriced in the market. He will not sell sub-par businesses as long as he expected them to generate at least some cash and as long as he feels good about their managers and relations even if he knows that doing so will hurt his profit. He will not lay off workers during business downtime because he thinks that it is neither business-like nor humane. It may be more important to understand these business decisions than what is included in the book.

Mr. Buffet does a remarkable job of simplifying the complexities of investing. His homespun stories and self-deprecating humor make the subject matter entertaining, easy to understand and very useful.

It is remarkable for a man of his stature in the investment world to openly discuss his many mistakes and bad investment decisions and yet, we should all be so lucky as to have the fortitude and the wisdom to invest with the same degree of success that he has experienced - even with much smaller sums of money.

I highly recommend this book to everyone that owns common stock.

Want the equivalent of an MBA - read this book! Skip the first 26 pages and get right into reading Buffet directly. After reading the rest of the book go back and read the first 26 pages for a great summary.

A must read for anyone interested in business.

Lucid and brilliant, a clear lesson on capital allocation. The only objection would be the repeated content, but truthfully it helped the ideas sink in a bit.

Thank you for editing this collection Professor Cunningham.

I work for a financial services company, and I'm subjected to corporate gobbledegook on a daily basis. Warren Buffett gets to the point. His explanations of financial transactions seem so effortless, I can't imagine how others get so confused and obtuse. Here's a mind worth delving in to, and this book lets you sit on the shoulder of a modern genius to see how he thinks. Good stuff.

These are the actual words penned by Buiffett. Not as dry as one would think, he's actually a wonderful writer. The Oracle of Omaha can turn a phrase and while parts of this are slow going, I enjoyed it throughly.

I heartily recommend this book for those desiring wealth. I also strongly recommend The Millionaire Mind by Tom Stanley. The Millionaire Mind

In the CNBC Liz Clayman interview with Buffett, he stated that of all the books written about him, this one is his favorite...it is an excellent read.

I must've read this book at least 5 times and each time, I learned something new. Warren Buffett doesn't like to talk about stock picks nor has he write any type of investment book. However, this book is as close as it come to being Buffett's investment book [if he ever decide to write one]. His investing philosophy are sound and insightful. Best of all, this book is full of wit.

Warning: it might be a little dense for beginners but once you understand the financial terms, you won't regret buying this book!

This is a great book for people to understand the relationship between Corporate governance and business wellness. a must read for a long term investor.

If only more corporations were run like Berkshire Hathaway. Common sense on how to run a company and to manage it. If you are an investor, it should be required reading.

I like the way the book has been organized by investment topic. This is a must read for any aspiring investor.

The thing that strikes me in reading this book is the amazing moral standard that Buffett maintains. Oh, that more of the corporate world would practice his ethics. You're in for a treat with this read.

Excellent comments from a man that proves Nice Guys do not finish last, they just keep going. Excellent ideas on creating capital the rational and humane way.

The thing that strikes me in reading this book is the amazing moral standard that Buffett maintains. Oh, that more of the corporate world would practice his ethics. You're in for a treat with this read.

I bought this Book because I read in the reviews that the author organized the topics. But after reading it and reading the Shareholders letter, I learn more from the shareholders letter because it discusses with the decision in assessing companies. It book is helpful to those who doesn't have time to spend reading all the shareholders letter.

As a Berkshire Hathaway shareholder, I believe this is a good collection of essays by Warren Buffett. However, keep in mind that much of the essays are quite dated. While all of them are from the past, many of them are from decades ago.

While still a useful read for a gleen into Buffett's investing fundamentals, I believe you could learn just as much by downloading the letters to the shareholders totally free from the Berkshire Hathaway website-this is probably what Warren Buffett would do. And doing so gives you the further benefit of being able to read more recent words than what is including in this book.

Others have dealt with the specifics and offer many quotes from Cunningham's book. I will deal with why you need to read this book, and its source material directly.


Warren Buffett has never written a book, which is sad for the rest of us, and he probably never will. At the same time, Buffett is one of the finest writers on financial thought in our society today. The clarity, brevity, perfect phrasing, and play on words that he is capable of, would lead most sophisticated readers to believe that the Sage of Omaha could have had quite a remarkable career in journalism had he chose to go another way in life.


Since 1977, what Buffett has done so effectively, is personally write (no committees, or public relations firms) a Chairman's letter to his Berkshire Hathaway shareholders. The letters (all of them) are freely available to you by going to the Berkshire website, and downloading them. The earliest letters were much shorter than the later letters, as Buffett's style writing style evolved. He was also more willing to share his thoughts in later years.


Lawrence Cunningham, the editor of these essays is a very fine financial mind in his own right. What he has done is organize the contents of the Buffett letters into different categories. At the same time, he has left out the technical aspects of the letters for the most part, which refers to any specific transactions Berkshire committed in any given year. This allows us, the readers to be able to go right for the wisdom that is contained in the letters. We are thus able to leap over what some readers might consider less important financial details of business transactions.


IS THIS THE WAY TO GO?


For many it is better to read Cunningham's book. The choice reminds me of the joke about the two lecture halls at Harvard University. One says GOD on the door. The other says LECTURE ON GOD. Everybody wants to go to the LECTURE as opposed to seeing the real thing. In this case the real thing is Buffett's words without someone organizing them for you.


All communication is context related. You know this. If you were to download the letters, one at a time, and read them in chronological order starting with the first letter, something quite remarkable might happen.


You would be getting the PURE FLOW of Buffett's mind, from him to you directly - NO INTERMEDIARIES. Yes, depending upon your sophistication, you might not understand everything he is saying, but that doesn't matter. You'd get it, I promise you.


You'd write in the margins as I do. You would underline, or highlight what is important. You would write questions. You'd make those letters yours; in short, you would take OWNERSHIP OF THEM. At the end of your journey, you would have an extraordinary financial education.


You would learn things that you will never ever read anywhere else. This is because you would be the one interpreting Buffett, and you would have startling insights that other writers have not picked up on. Just about everybody writing about Buffett from authors, to journalists are not in the same league as the MASTER. They want to impress you themselves with their words, and their ideas, or twist Buffett's thinking and bask in the reflected glory. Please allow me to illustrate.


Nobody ever writes about how Buffett is hardwired in a different way than the rest of us, and this is his genius. It's no different than running into Newton, Einstein, or Leonardo da Vinci. The concept of compounding on a geometric level is in Buffett's brain while the rest of us play at an arithmetic level. This is no different than a World Champion Chess Master. The only difference between an International Grand Master (IGM), and a World Champion is that the World Champion can think one more move ahead than the IGM.


In a meeting I attended in Wall Street a couple of decades ago, Buffett said, "One of the stupidest things you can do with money is spend it." Who else on the planet would say such a thing? He meant it too. Buffett doesn't think like an investor, he thinks like a businessman who is making investments, only when he makes them, they are not investments to him. They are allocations of capital. You will notice he is always talking about allocations of capital. So what does this mean?


If you can get a 20% yearly compounded rate of return for decades with no tax consequences until you sell (capital gains treatment in the end), you can build capital into the billions depending upon what you start with. Take Emerson a company you probably don't know. A dollar invested in 1956, by 2000 was worth $638. Those are Buffett type returns, and I can show you scores of public corporations that are comparable in performance. You must hold long enough to let compounding work for you.


BOOK is FABULOUS


You want to read this book for the wisdom, the quotes, that you can memorize, and attempt to exploit for your personal investment advantage. We should all be grateful to the author for doing this. Buffett himself has publicly complimented the author for his work because he is the first author to give you pure Buffett without altering the Master's words.


In closing, I have read Cunningham's book several times, and you should too. Just don't forget to go to the actual source documents, the letters themselves. Carry one around with you in your pocket, and just read it in a park, in a restaurant, or anywhere else you can reflect, and work with pure genius.


Richard Stoyeck

As a Berkshire Hathaway shareholder, I believe this is a good collection of essays by Warren Buffett. However, keep in mind that much of the essays are quite dated. While all of them are from the past, many of them are from decades ago.

While still a useful read for a gleen into Buffett's investing fundamentals, I believe you could learn just as much by downloading the letters to the shareholders totally free from the Berkshire Hathaway website-this is probably what Warren Buffett would do. And doing so gives you the further benefit of being able to read more recent words than what is including in this book.

As a Berkshire Hathaway shareholder, I believe this is a good collection of essays by Warren Buffett. However, keep in mind that much of them are quite dated. While all of them are from the past, many of them are from decades ago.

While still a useful read, I believe you could learn just as much by downloading the letters to the shareholders totally free from the Berkshire Hathaway website-this is probably what Warren Buffett would do. And doing so gives you the further benefit of being able to read more recent words than what is including in this book.

If you are not familiar with Warren Buffett he is the greatest investor of all time. Mentored by Benjamin Graham (The father of value investing" he went on to produce over an annual 20% return in his stock portfolio for 40 years. As Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway he also brought a failing textile business that was trading at $4 a share in 1965 to the highest priced stock ever at over $100,000 a share in 2007.
If you are are familiar with Mr. Buffett then let me tell you I am also a huge fan. This book is the one he chose out of a stack of books during a special that featured him on CNBC during the holidays "The billionaire next door".He said this one out of the many written about him capture his thoughts and investment style. Mr. Buffet's comments about this book were "First class. A great job at collating our philosophy". Can you get a better review than that?
I was not disappointed, this is the book to by if you want to study and understand Warren Buffett. The author has done an excellent job arranging the essays to the shareholders in a format that will enable us all to learn the key principles in investing and managing followed by Buffett.I always wished that Mr. Buffett would have written a book, this is the closest we may ever have. Buy it and enjoy, it is packed with profound yet simple wisdom. Here are a few examples:

Virtually all his $40 billion net worth is in Berkshire stock.(99% of it) So much for diversification, he believes in putting all your eggs in one basket, then watching that basket.

Margin of safety is critical in investing, only buy excellent businesses at fair prices.

Only invest in businesses you understand. Your circle of competence.

He does not believe "value investing" is the right term for him. He prefers "focused" or "intelligent" investing.

He believes in buying excellent businesses, and then holding them, forever if possible.

When investing he believes in buying true value not hopes and dreams.

Get out a high lighter and prepare to learn. It is packed with great quotes and lessons.

Others have dealt with the specifics and offer many quotes from Cunningham's book. I will deal with why you need to read this book, and its source material directly.


Warren Buffett has never written a book, which is sad for the rest of us, and he probably never will. At the same time, Buffett is one of the finest writers on financial thought in our society today. The clarity, brevity, perfect phrasing, and play on words that he is capable of, would lead most sophisticated readers to believe that the Sage of Omaha could have had quite a remarkable career in journalism had he chose to go another way in life.


Since 1977, what Buffett has done so effectively, is personally write (no committees, or public relations firms) a Chairman's letter to his Berkshire Hathaway shareholders. The letters (all of them) are freely available to you by going to the Berkshire website, and downloading them. The earliest letters were much shorter than the later letters, as Buffett's style writing style evolved. He was also more willing to share his thoughts in later years.


Lawrence Cunningham, the editor of these essays is a very fine financial mind in his own right. What he has done is organize the contents of the Buffett letters into different categories. At the same time, he has left out the technical aspects of the letters for the most part, which refers to any specific transactions Berkshire committed in any given year. This allows us, the readers to be able to go right for the wisdom that is contained in the letters. We are thus able to leap over what some readers might consider less important financial details of business transactions.


IS THIS THE WAY TO GO?


For many it is better to read Cunningham's book. The choice reminds me of the joke about the two lecture halls at Harvard University. One says GOD on the door. The other says LECTURE ON GOD. Everybody wants to go to the LECTURE as opposed to seeing the real thing. In this case the real thing is Buffett's words without someone organizing them for you.


All communication is context related. You know this. If you were to download the letters, one at a time, and read them in chronological order starting with the first letter, something quite remarkable might happen.


You would be getting the PURE FLOW of Buffett's mind, from him to you directly - NO INTERMEDIARIES. Yes, depending upon your sophistication, you might not understand everything he is saying, but that doesn't matter. You'd get it, I promise you.


You'd write in the margins as I do. You would underline, or highlight what is important. You would write questions. You'd make those letters yours; in short, you would take OWNERSHIP OF THEM. At the end of your journey, you would have an extraordinary financial education.


You would learn things that you will never ever read anywhere else. This is because you would be the one interpreting Buffett, and you would have startling insights that other writers have not picked up on. Just about everybody writing about Buffett from authors, to journalists are not in the same league as the MASTER. They want to impress you themselves with their words, and their ideas, or twist Buffett's thinking and bask in the reflected glory. Please allow me to illustrate.


Nobody ever writes about how Buffett is hardwired in a different way than the rest of us, and this is his genius. It's no different than running into Newton, Einstein, or Leonardo da Vinci. The concept of compounding on a geometric level is in Buffett's brain while the rest of us play at an arithmetic level. This is no different than a World Champion Chess Master. The only difference between an International Grand Master (IGM), and a World Champion is that the World Champion can think one more move ahead than the IGM.


In a meeting I attended in Wall Street a couple of decades ago, Buffett said, "One of the stupidest things you can do with money is spend it." Who else on the planet would say such a thing? He meant it too. Buffett doesn't think like an investor, he thinks like a businessman who is making investments, only when he makes them, they are not investments to him. They are allocations of capital. You will notice he is always talking about allocations of capital. So what does this mean?


If you can get a 20% yearly compounded rate of return for decades with no tax consequences until you sell (capital gains treatment in the end), you can build capital into the billions depending upon what you start with. Take Emerson a company you probably don't know. A dollar invested in 1956, by 2000 was worth $638. Those are Buffett type returns, and I can show you scores of public corporations that are comparable in performance. You must hold long enough to let compounding work for you.


BOOK is FABULOUS


You want to read this book for the wisdom, the quotes, that you can memorize, and attempt to exploit for your personal investment advantage. We should all be grateful to the author for doing this. Buffett himself has publicly complimented the author for his work because he is the first author to give you pure Buffett without altering the Master's words.


In closing, I have read Cunningham's book several times, and you should too. Just don't forget to go to the actual source documents, the letters themselves. Carry one around with you in your pocket, and just read it in a park, in a restaurant, or anywhere else you can reflect, and work with pure genius.


Richard Stoyeck

Warrens essays show that a man can succeed beyond imagination adherring to some basics in evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of a company. A personal comment, Warren is honest beyond belief,and treats people with a great deal of respect. We have known Warren for over 40 years and consider him to be one of our best friends.

There are so many investment gems in this book. Warren Buffet has a way of stating things that stick with you, and pointing out things that others don't . Concepts like "look-through" earnings blew me away. You should own and read this book no matter what investment style you follow. The best thing this book has done for me is to show me how to value companies, how to think about a business in which you may invest for the long term. It'd be hard to call yourself a serious investor and not know what this book has to offer. Let's see, at $17 for the book, what price are you paying for the future cash flows that it will produce???? This book is THE BEST possible bang-for-buck investment you could ever make.

In his recent CNBC interview, Warren Buffett was shown some of the many books written about him. He said all the books were fairly accurate, although most contained some mistakes.

When asked his favorite, he said it was this book. If Warren thinks this is the book that best captures the man - that is good enough for me.

By the way, Warren says he hasn't gotten a penny from any of the books written about him.

There are so many investment gems in this book. Warren Buffet has a way of stating things that stick with you, and pointing out things that others don't . Concepts like "look-through" earnings blew me away. You should own and read this book no matter what investment style you follow. The best thing this book has done for me is to show me how to value companies, how to think about a business in which you may invest for the long term. It'd be hard to call yourself a serious investor and not know what this book has to offer. Let's see, at $17 for the book, what price are you paying for the future cash flows that it will produce???? This book is THE BEST possible bang-for-buck investment you could ever make.

To sum up this investor as the greatest investor of our time is correct. You can learn much from the tales of his experience and advice. I can appreciate the time and effort the man takes to select the businesses he buys and leads to economic success. How can the average investor profit from his experiences. I agree with the other reviewers that this book is an outstanding essay for those who want to learn how to select stocks for a value portfolio. Where we differ is that the typical investor he does not have the resources to build a properly diversified portfolio. Value stocks do provide returns in excess of broad market returns but in order to have adequate diversification you must assemble several hundred issues well beyond the resources of the average investor. Further one must have the time and skill to evaluate several thousand issues. I can offer a solution to this problem. I want to recommend for you a book titled How to Make Money in the Stock Market-Buy 2,500 different stocks for $1000 - Pay no Commission This book is a must for those wanting to find out about indexing (passive investing) and why it is the superior method for the small investor (and big one too). This book is an outstanding guide to personal investing. It will be useful to all investors from novices to highly the highly experienced. This book prepares the reader to approach investing from the standpoint of the underlying science. It is the antithesis of a 'get rich quick scheme'.

All aspects of Modern Portfolio Theory and passive (index) investing are explained in a through and easily understood manner. The aspect I like most is that as well as a solid theoretical foundation the book is very practical and shows the reader how to create (and more importantly) and manage over time a successful portfolio. This is a great book- for the beginning investor, it's a great place to start and for the experienced investor there are many valuable suggestions.

It's a shame to think of how much money investors have lost "investing" in the stock market over the years. I wish I had read this little book years ago. The chapter on automatic investing recommends a number of portfolios that follow modern portfolio theory and adjust risk as you age without any effort on the part of the reader at all. Had this book been written years ago and had I followed its directions I would be rich today of that I am certain. Nevertheless I will pursue one of the portfolios recommended and stick to my chosen asset plan.

This is a collection taken from his annual reports. They are brilliant.
The man knows his stuff and explains everything so it's easy to understand.
And, he's very funny, so it's an enjoyable read as well as a very
educational one. He writes in an intelligent, but folksy sort of way.
I'd recommend this book to anyone interested in Buffett, the man, or in
any aspect of business.

This is a collection taken from his annual reports. They are brilliant.
The man knows his stuff and explains everything so it's easy to understand.
And, he's very funny, so it's an enjoyable read as well as a very
educational one. He writes in an intelligent, but folksy sort of way.
I'd recommend this book to anyone interested in Buffett, the man, or in
any aspect of business.

Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America is a compendium of business issues that are collated in a brilliant manner, that showcases Warren Buffet wit, candor and business acumen within his dissertations that make this book a riveting read.

5 stars!

you should not buy this collection of Warren Buffett's letters to investors. You should instead visit the Berkshire Hathaway website where all of these essays are available for free and invest the $22 in a good company following the principles outlined in these essays.

If these essays were not so easily available, this collection would definitely be worth buying.

must have. the only buffet book with his actual words. buffet himself says it is the best book about him. he says all other books about him all have mistakes. according to an interview granted to liz clayman of cnbc.

This book is a collection of letters written by Warren Buffet. I learned a great deal about how to think about a business or investment in "more real" accounting terms. This book helps me create a reference for investing in stocks or in valuing a business.

I will be suprised if you read this book and are able to put it down.. !

Okay so you may not have the same capital as he does to purchase things, but you can still apply some simple basics into your investments. Look for something simple but makes money, look for good management, and look for low debt. If you are a business owner, you can also learn how to position your company to be a perfect "buy out". Overall a good read. Other investment books to suggest is Investing, Without Losing (ISBN 0978834607).

When I recieved "The Essay's of Warren Buffett...", I have to admit I was disapointed. I could gather the essays from Mr. Buffet's Annual reports myself. However, the book's organization is where the value lays. The author has spliced together associated topics from various essays in a manner that makes it appear that they were part of one to begin with. What results is an invaluable source on Mr. Buffett's thinking on a broad range of subjects and how some of his positions have evolved over time. I was truly happy that I did not disregard what I initially percieved to be a poor purchase on my part. Enjoy!

Short and sweet, this book is a collection of Warren Buffetts essays! He one of the riches and most financially savy men in the world, he might not be 100% right 100% of the time, but he is damn close!

Amazing book, you will be glad you purchased it!

These essays are collected from Berkshire's annual letter to shareholders, which are available for free on Berkshire Hathaway's website. The essays Lawrence Cunningham selected provide a good synopsis of Warren's investment philosophies and cut through to the point of some very important concepts. Both Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger are the clearest-minded, sharpest, to-the-point thinkers when it comes to investments and their openness in sharing their true beliefs is an unbelievable blessing for those wise enough to pay attention and study. I doubt there is any other billionaire who would share his innermost thoughts, beliefs and secrets to success in the fashion that Buffett does.

OK enough praise, I could go on and on about his successes but here are a few tidbits from the book:

"Inactivity strikes us as intelligent behavior. Neither we nor most business managers would dream of feverishly trading highly-profitable subsidiaries because a small move in the Federal Reserve's discount rate or because some Wall Street pundit had reversed his views on the market."

"Obviously many companies in high-tech businesses or embryonic industries will grow much faster in percentage terms than will `The Inevitables- Coke, Gillette and his latest perchase BUD'. But I would rather certain of a good result than hopeful of a great one."

"In our view, though, investment students need only two well-tought courses-How to Value a Business, and How to Think about Market Prices. Your goal as an investor should simply be to purchase, at a rational price, a part interest in an easily-understandable business who's earnings are virtually certain to be materially higher five, ten and twenty years from now."

"In the final chapter of The Intelligent Investor, Ben Graham points our: `Confronted with a challenge to distill the secret of sound investment into three words, we venture the motto, Margin of Safety.' Forty-two years after reading that, I still think those are the right three words."

"Beware of past-performance `proofs' in finance: If history books were the key to riches, the Forbes 400 would consist of librarians."

"Market commentators and investment managers who glibly refer to `growth' and `value' styles as contrasting approaches to investment are displaying their ignorance, not their sophistication."

Berkshire's purchase criteria:
1) Large purchases (at least $50 million of before tax earnings)
2) Demonstrated consistent earnings power (future projections are of little interest to us, nor are turnaround situations)
3) Businesses earning good return on equity while employing little or no debt
4) Management in place - We cant supply it
5) Simple business (if there's l;ots of technology, we won't understand it)
6) An offering price

Some interesting stats on See's Chocolates which was bought in 1972 by Blue Chip Stamps- a subsidiary of Berkshire:

Bought early in 1972 for $25 million and was earning about $2 million after tax. (which was 25% return on net tangible assets of $8 million)

In 1983 See's earned $13 million after taxes ($27 million pre-tax)

In 1995 it earned $50 million pre-tax

By Kevin Kingston author of A 20,000% Gain in Real Estate: A True Story About the Ups and Downs From Wall Street to Real Estate Leading up to Phenomenal Returns

My Blog: The Real Estate Investors Blog

This excellent book was hard to put down. Mr. Buffett is as innately talented a writer as he is a businessman. The book funny, entertaining and highly informative, is sure to add significantly to the knowledge of any aspiring investor. Buffett takes topics like corporate accounting malfeasance and makes you laugh at them while at the same time providing profound insight into the inner workings of the corporate enviornment. This title is definatly one you will want to own.

The smartest guy in the last centuries was the king of spain who owned every single harbour in the world.
Since then the spanish intel has been gathering all this information.What is their take on intelligence, the smartest country in the world is not Russia, the USA, ISRAEL, SPAIN, PORTUGAL all of them together. It is the Vatican.

Pablo Claudio GATON FRAILE
C/Dr.Esquerdo,57/4B
E-28007 MADRID

AND Husillos PALENCIA (SPAIN) European Union

Those who read and listen to the wise, may one day become wise.
If you're serious about investing money for yourself or others, reading Warren Buffett is 101. Plain talk is often the result of complex thinking out of the box. Mr. Buffett's logic always seems to come back in favor after the latest hot investment trends lose their luster. Smart investing has always been about buying good companies when they're cheap and not in favor with the market, and then being patient.

Good book! Definitely one of the bests written about Warren Buffett.

Ocean Blue