Buffettology: The Previously Unexplained Techniques That Have Made Warren Buffett The Worlds

Amazon.com
Americans are infatuated with the stock market. The number of households that own stock has increased from around 20 percent in the early 1980s to over 40 percent today. The market offers the hope of quick wealth and early retirement, and just about everyone who is in the market is looking for an edge, from sources such as CNBC and Wall Street Week to the Beardstown Ladies and "The Motley Fool." So it should be no surprise the most successful investor of our time--Warren Buffett--has been the subject of dozens of books and magazine articles. The value of Buffett's company, Berkshire Hathaway, has increased from $18 per share in 1965 to over $70,000 per share today. The interest in Buffett has spawned an approach to investing called "Buffettology," which is the subject of a book by the same name written by Buffett's former daughter-in-law, Mary Buffett.

In Buffettology, Mary Buffett, with the help of David Clark, details Warren Buffett's approach to investing. It's a style of investing based on the work of Benjamin Graham and one that requires a quality that most investors lack--discipline. Mary Buffett writes, "As you read through this book you will come to see that having a business perspective on investing is more about discipline than philosophy.... In short, other people's follies, brought on by fear and greed, will offer you, the investor, the opportunity to take advantage of their mistakes and benefit from the discipline of committing capital to investment only when it makes sense from a business perspective.... You will find that almost everything that relates to business perspective investing is alien to Wall Street folklore.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

This is not another cut-and-paste of Warren Buffett's letters to shareholders of Berkshire-Hathaway, nor a biography filled with anecdotes about Buffett. Instead, it is designed to teach you Buffett's extraordinarily successful system of business perspective investing — from the mathematical equations that assist him in making investment decisions to the actual companies that have captured his interest. Buffettology is a detailed analysis of how Buffett commits capital to investment only from a business perspective, the strategy that gives him the discipline to exploit the stock market's folly. It answers the questions — that for years seem to have eluded investment professionals and Buffettologists — about how Warren Buffett turned $105,000 into $20 billion and became the world's most famous investor.

SYNOPSIS

The key concepts behind the billionaire investor's investing techniques plus a never-before-published list of 50 companies that Buffett himself has invested in.

FROM THE CRITICS

Business Week

A probe inside the head of a financial genius.

Fort Worth Star Telegram

A sound and well proven investment policy.

Publishers Weekly

For decades, Warren Buffet has been a nearly heroic figure of finance, whose strategy turned an initial $105,000 investment into a $16-billion fortune and whose publicly traded holding company, Berkshire-Hathaway, rose from a $450-per-share price in the 1980s to $36,000 in 1997. Here, Buffet's former daughter-in-law, a CEO of Superior Assembly, with a 30-year friend of the family, who is an Omaha portfolio analyst and lawyer, tells all. Buffet scorns speculative stock-market hype. He buysat a carefully researched favorable pricea 100% or partial interest in companies having "intrinsic value" and a logical pattern of growth as a virtual consumer monopoly based on need (e.g., GE) or common acceptance (e.g., Coca-Cola) financed tax-free by undistributed earnings. Guidance is given here on researching a company's intrinsic value and management competence, making stock-price downturns into buying opportunities, taking account of inflation taxation considerations, and the tantalizing question of when to sell. Most interesting is the authors' closing rundown of "Warren's" specific holdings and how they grew.

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

Stevin Hoover