I think moralism is an side effect of the demise of spiritualism in the west. We somehow have to shape moral values, the lack of a framework for it makes it feel blunt and chaotic.

That being said, I find it odd to moralize on moralism. We have way too many people in power that are awful humans and do a bad job and never get punished.

Meanwhile, stealing a car because you are hungry can be the begin of a ruined life.

There is no balance.

(This isn't about buffet, idc, just about your interwoven opinion.)

Sure -- but as far as idols go, you could do a lot worse than Mr. Buffett

I agree, however I don’t think the last two of your bullets are necessarily something to learn from on the surface.

The house he bought at 28 is 3500 square feet in a very very nice neighborhood and was worth $1.2 million a few years ago. It's humble by billionaire standards, not by average person standards. He never needed to size-up because of children, or size-down because of a bad economy, he was already set for both space and finances. Let's not create a moralistic myth out of his lack of need.

I appreciate this viewpoint. Thanks for sharing.

> Our society has become moralistic

Which is extremely important. It's important to call out highly immoral behavior and lifestyles. Being a billionaire by itself is highly immoral. These people sleep like babies while people starve to death.

> He consistently communicated with shareholders of Berkshire in a straight-forward and transparent way in his letters and annual reports.

We praising for the bare minimum now?

He said he would keep writing at least once a year.

> - He still lives in the same home he bought when he was 28 years old.

Really makes me wonder what drives him. For many people it's the money, but with him it doesn't seem that way. But I haven't read too much about him, so if anyone has insight I'd love to hear about it.

>>Here are some things Buffet has done that I admire (notice that phrasing):

Perhaps the best thing Buffet has managed to do is to live long. Most of compounding magic begins at ages 60-65, a time where most investors start to die out.

Second best thing he did was to start/acquire a insurance firm. The 'float' helps them to run a kind of in house index fund on other peoples money, without having to pay TERs/Fees. Thats basically no effort bogle style compounding. Even if you end with a situation where you have to return ALL the premiums collected, you still get to keep the returns.

Other wise everything else is just fairly normal, if you are sitting in front of charts for long, its impossible to miss something that's going up on a weekly timeframe for long periods of time. You just pyramid upwards and wait, patiently.

The real issue is waiting doesn't work too well for most people as you start to die out after 60.

"He still lives in the same home he bought when he was 28 years old."

Good for him. Big savings right there. Buying/selling/moving house can cost a fortune.

He shamelessly advertised companies in his portfolio, whether it was always having a can of coke or candies on the table or stopping at a McDonald's in a documentary.

I refuse to believe that his lifestyle was what was on display.

He lived in the same house for 60 years, sure, but his private jets kept getting upgraded. Good for him, but I find the frugality theater very off putting.

America, as an idea, is so strange

I always salute at the McDonalds drive-thru.

Being genuine here - what is heroic about those two things?

By several accounts, Buffet has a "McGold" card - good for free food for life, at least at Omaha-area McDonalds locations.

Combined that with his "frugal" and "creature of habit" reputations, that might explain is morning routine.

Idk about hero, but he's definitely american. What a fast food warrior!

also incredible that america is safe enough for a billionaire to do this alone without security

Yet another example to me of how he literally engineered his life for success, using principles like choosing which variables to hold fixed. What discipline.

His whole "I love fast food and coca cola" thing is a fake persona

Sorry, a person who life is built around greed is no hero.

Buffet is not a good guy. Our society’s greatest problem right now is concentrated corporate power being used to destroy the ability of working people to prosper.

Buffet had an active and direct role in making this happen. He supported and advocated for monopoly, and profited from it.

He lived a lavish life that included opulent mansions and private jets, and used his resources to deftly drive a media narrative of himself as a regular guy, with apparent success as your post demonstrates.

I'll play along, so here is the counterpoint. The article remarks on end of an era during which he transformed a failing textile mill into a global conglomerate valued at over $1 trillion. So he never made anything? Wrong, textile mills make things.

Elsewhere in the comments someone links BuffettsAlpha.pdf This explains that they used a 1.6-to-1 leverage refers to the estimate of the average amount of borrowed capital Warren Buffett uses to magnify the returns. This level of leverage means that for every $1.00 of equity, Buffett manages approximately $1.60 in total assets. It explains why Berkshire experiences high volatility (roughly 25%) despite investing in relatively stable, low-risk businesses. A significant portion of this leverage—estimated at 36% of liabilities—comes from insurance float. This is essentially a "loan" that costs Berkshire an average of only 2.2% annually, which is more than 3 percentage points below the average T-bill rate.

So why does this matter? Unlike many investors who might face forced liquidations during market downturns, Buffett's unique access to stable, low-cost financing allows him to maintain this leverage even during significant drawdowns.

So yes, he chose the right "cronies" because during inevitable downturn the money was still there to be used to run these low risk stable business.

Do people idolise him? No need to debate that but power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Why did he continue to live a simple life while he has pledged that 99.5% of his wealth will go to philanthropic causes either during his lifetime or at the time of his death.

So I do think you "got that right", however you may have missed that he started with a factory that makes things, invested in a way that survived adversity, and then plans to deliver on the principle that his wealth belongs to society rather than to a "family empire."

I do wonder how you or I would handle running a business. To me that work does not sound easy.

I don't know the guy, but by all indications he is even-keeled, low-stress, conscientious but come what may. Given his nationality and net-worth, I'd wager that Warren is a centenarian in waiting, unless and until he chooses to invest in the afterlife. Whichever comes first.

Respect.

BRK is now (since the last 10-20 years) large and diversified enough that it more or less tracks the S&P 500 and the overall stock market. There isn't some genius trading strategy in there. Buffett himself tells everyone who will listen to buy and hold a diversified index fund for a long period of time.

Last I heard he had a couple guys working for him who sound extremely smart and explained it’s almost impossible to beat the S&P but they try.

> In any case, I hope Warren can experience not working at all in the few years he likely has left after being alive for over 1/3 of his country's existence!

Honestly I struggle to understand the desire of folks earning an income to wish the best for folks who have literally never struggled in their lives. This hero worship of billionaires is bizarre in the extreme. Warren Buffet earned his billions on investments from friends and family that the vast, vast majority of people have zero access to. But people keep acting as if he is some sort of genius because he was able to grow an equivalent of $1MM in investments from friends and family at a time when basically every single fucking industry in the country was growing at crazy rates. Capital begets capital. Wake me up when someone actually comes from rags and doesn't just try to weave that into their propaganda.

There's no Buffett's strategy. Market buys whatever Buffett's company bought. That's how he got unusual gains.

Moment of fame stretched over 60 year of clipping coupons off of that initial fame.

The thing that made it possible was that he was content with his performance and never tried to one up himself. He kept his fame and market interest in him simmering over six decades inatead burning out in one bright flash.

That wasn't their main thing. The main one was to buy stocks or companies for less than they were worth, either because the market mispriced them or because company owners wanted to retire and sell to Berkshire. They also were big into insurance float which is getting insurance premium money that doesn't have to be paid out for a while which provides a kind of free leverage. Buffett did a lot of other things too.

Isn't that the model of every private equity? It was always hard to do well.

Although it doesn't seem that way, there are lot of companies that have become large recently, it is best time ever historically for companies to be able to grow large quickly much more so than 50 years ago in the early days of BH.

There are 1000+ unicorns today, about 50 of the fortune 500 are founded > 2000, a large number of companies that have chosen to remain private with revenues in excess of >$10B like Stripe or SpaceX etc

While it is true that lot of the action has been in sectors BH has never been comfortable holding large assets in such as SaaS, new fin-tech(i.e. crypto etc), or gig econ(Airbnb/Uber etc), social media(tiktok et al.) etc, that doesn't mean the principles are no longer needed or there aren't opportunities to take stake in these now mature companies and drive value.

Berkshire had a pivot where, decades back, Munger convinced Buffett to switch from investing in bad companies at a great price to good companies at a good price. Their new strategy is still active.

That said, the turnaround 'mission' you mention about still happens, but is more associated with private equity than Berkshire.

Well, many companies are still mispriced, but stock markets today look a lot more like voting machines than weighing machines - so it takes more time to be proven right (or wrong).

Seems inaccurate to me. What I've heard is that BRK is famous for being hands-off. Their management team is too small anyway to have done much micromanaging.

Buffett's restraint was legendary and his transparency even more so.

Bill Gates also initially dismissed him, thinking he had nothing to learn.

General Electric also tried to "make a number go up" and effed up the insurance part despite having Buffett as a model and putting 10,000 people through their custom management training facility every year.

Raise a glass to the man and read his letters.

> Berkshire's investment in Apple is responsible for ~50% of its portfolio success in the last 20 years.

And by all accounts, that investment was suggested by his son. He famously said that he didn't understand technology enough to invest in it.

Did Berkshire investing in Apple shares help Apple achieve success?

That link isn't loading up for me.

Buffett's Alpha: http://docs.lhpedersen.com/BuffettsAlpha.pdf

tldr; he was leveraged with good stocks

This is merely your failure to imagine it. Maybe they enjoy it, maybe they have a specific goal they want to achieve, have some sort of obsession, maybe they feel duty to all the people they lead and relie on them, think they are making the world better so they feel compelled to continue working, are mad with power and enjoy lording over other people. There are many many reasons why one would work after being financially secure, and they're all equally valid as a personal motivator.

And, anyways, I think you say this now, but if you were to get those 10 millions you would probably change your tune. A lot of people would find some other project to dedicate their energy. Especially the kind of people that make stuff happen.

Work life is quite a lot different for a working-stiff than it is for a CEO. In large part, their company is an extension of themselves. Work whatever hours you want to. Private plane to take you wherever you want to go for free, if you can come up with a work-related excuse to go there (with no need to justify not coming back for weeks). Multiple folks acting more-or-less as your personal assistants. An office bigger than your house, filled with anything you want in it, on the company's dime. A big pool of cash you can order the company to throw at whatever interests you. etc.

He sat around talking to people, reading, betting on stocks/financial markets, playing games and occasionally buying a business.... that is many people's dream retirement.

Their work is their enjoyment. Buffett would've been investing even in "retirement," so to him, work and retirement are functionally the same.

When you are the boss work is a lot less unpleasant than when you are an employee. When you are at the highest level in the organization and also the major shareholder, you can shape your work environment and and workday in a way that you like it.

He worked for 60 years because he liked doing it, and as he became more successful, the job just getting more pleasant for him.

I cannot speak for him but from reading his annual reports and various writings and listening to the occasional interview, it seems that he enjoyed working much more than anything he would do while being retired.

You can call this great american work ethic, and that is part of it, but the other part of it is that when you are the boss you can kind of remove most unpleasant parts of your job and leave only the parts that are the most fun and interesting for you.

Can you imagine reading and researching the world on your retirement? Because that's what people like him do, except they mainly focus on 10-K statements. Those are genuinely interesting to read once you learn to skip boilerplate and go for the content.

I'm at that point now, debating when I'll retire. We only live once and I'm not sure if I should continue working. I've reached financial freedom at a pretty young age. It's a daily debate in my mind when to call it quits, but I've never not worked and it's difficult to make the change. What I'm missing in life is time and that's what work takes from me and is the driving force behind my desire to retire -- time to do other things in life.

I totally get it. You need a purpose to be happy. If you enjoy your work and get a sense of fulfillment from it, why should you stop?

What does retiring even means when

- you enjoy it AND

- you do not have a "boss" telling you what to do AND

- it makes you more "popular" because the World you live in associate a higher number with your "value" in society

Why would you even stop? It's not about having enough to survive.

He's just wired differently. He spent his spare time reading financial statements.

You could argue he was retired and just continuing his hobby.

If your number is on the order of $10 million, I suspect that no, you wouldn't, because you haven't thought hard enough about retirement and how to achieve and keep it with a satisfying lifestyle to realize that you don't need nearly so much (or at least most people, maybe you have a need for very fancy things, I won't judge). And requiring $50 million at a younger age? What's the logic in that? The younger you are the lower you can set your number, because if you end up being wrong either about the feasibility or about your mental state from not having a job, you still have time to fix things or even pivot to a new career. (You also get more years of compound interest.) I quit my BigCo job 5 years ago just before my 30th birthday with ~$500k across VFIAX and VGT, I've been "retired" since and that amount has grown considerably. I'm still quite happy not working for someone, while still being reasonably confident I could get a programming job again if a need or desire arose, and there's always the possibility of going a bit crazy and burning through it all to self-fund hiring some employees of my own to make a go at a business.

It's not hard for me to understand why people keep working even if I'm not and don't want to be that way. There are so many reasons, I'll list a few, some work just as well even for people who are working despite having "enough", whatever that means. Some people just really like having a job, or think of it as a moral duty (and themselves as doing good by fulfilling that obligation), or some get their self-worth from having a job, or some like being occupied by work when they know that without it they'd just rot. Some like the social company. Many actually like their work a lot more than they dislike it and pay above some threshold is just "nice". If you're particularly good at your job, too, there's a lot of joy in doing things you're good at, no matter what kind of job it is. Some have expensive tastes or have made expensive compromises or have fallen on expensive bad luck that all can need ongoing funding. Some want to make or support things and need capital to do so. Some just see life as a game, and money going up is their source of happiness and sign of winning. There's all sorts of minds and preferences in this world.

I would probably be Software Engineering even if my employer didn't pay me to. As evidence, note that it's new year's eve and I'm writing patches (and waiting for tests) during my holidays for someone else's FOSS project I'm contributing to :).

I my employer didn't pay me, I'd stop working on their projects. But in the meantime, I enjoy my profession (at least most of the time) and get paid. If I had enough money then I'd stop working on what my management wants and work on stuff that I want to work on. And I have to imagine that at this point, Buffet is also doing whatever he wants to.

Can you imagine a singer who will continue singing even after getting 50 million ?

To some people, their careers are interesting in and of itself, beyond money.

This applies to many professions: scientists, CEOs, writers, painters.

As a retired person I’ve always been curious about this. I questioned a friend who is multiple FU money rich. He said he just love his job, and he’s in a position to work the way he wants to work.

Not my cup of tea (and Die with Zero book explains the common sense on this) but I get why though. There is tons of status attached to it, lots of people don’t know what to do with themselves, a lot of identity ( especially in US) attached to the work.

He did exactly what he wanted to do. That's all you need to know. To each their own.

Charlie’s will explains their mindset:

https://youtu.be/FvRT15EayG0

“Everything must end; meanwhile we must amuse ourselves.”

— Voltaire

When what you do depends on having power and you are above a certain level it's either up or down and out.

For a lucky few of us, our job is something we might do unpaid if we had our needs addressed already. It's fun!

I like travel, I like relaxing at home. But I don't know if it's what I'd want to do all the time. I like having some pull, driving me towards a greater goal.

Retiring simply means doing something else. For him, whatever that was must have been less fun.

I get the sense that he arranged things so that he didn't have to work all that hard, he didn't do any short-term trading requiring constant attention and his work was done at his portfolio companies as soon as they had management he trusted.

I get you, but maybe you wouldn't be able to retire.

It was that quest for more that made them even get to that 10 or 50 million you talk about.

If they didn't have that personality for more, they likely would have stopped way sooner.

Warren Buffett also retried at a younger age. In a 1969 letter to partners he wrote, “I intend to give all limited partners the required formal notice of my intention to retire”. But life had other plans…

It provides purpose. Many people who retire early after doing all the random stuff they thought would be cool would likely find themselves isolated and decaying without purpose.

I like to say if I could retire today; I would do the same thing I do now, just without a boss telling me to do it. I love what I do.

If you are really enjoying your life, why would you change it to something that you wouldn't enjoy?

HN seems allergic to discussing the reality of power dynamics IME.

Being in charge of Berkshire hathaway is a very powerful and respected, revered, envied, coveted, admired. Retired is just retired. As folksy as he presented I suspect Buffet very much enjoyed weilding that power which he could not likely ever get elsewhere.

According to him he was doing what he liked.

What would you do though? My brain needs problems to solve. Maybe I'd just grow my own food. But if I didn't like that and just bought food I'd get bored very quickly.

I agree with you. There are so many more worthwhile things to do than investing. I would also retire immediately with that kind of money and focus on creating real value in the world

> I will never undertand this people that live all their life working, when they clearly have the chance to retire much sooner.

Some people just love what they do. In addition to people loving what they do, there are also people who don't like to do nothing: travelling, reading, sipping pina coladas in the pool in Florida, painting, playing videogames all day long etc. is not for everyone.

And there are even people who fit both: they love what they do and they have moreover absolutely no interest in retiring and "doing nothing".

EDIT: also some people are action junkies that must be working. A friend of mine is working a full-time regular job and is also a voluntary firefighter, responding to emergencies during week-ends etc. He doesn't do it for the little additional money it brings: he does it because he loves to be helpful.

We all die on the same order of magnitude.

We all have pleasure and suffering along the same couple of orders of magnitude.

In geological timespans, none of the fun you had will matter. Even a year from now, your memories are just wistful nostalgia (perhaps a psychological detriment!) And that's if your brain architecture is even set up to recall senses and events well (not everyone can).

My view is that the intellectual pursuit is more fulfilling than a world simulating traversal of novel experiences. Those neurons will turn to dust soon anyway, and it'll be like it never even happened. Why spend so much time fretting over it?

Spend time with family, but trying to rack up on restaurants and things and places and visits - meh, it's just simulation and squirts of neurotransmitters. Ephemeral. They leave no trace. It all fades to emptiness.

I'm not saying be completely stoic. But don't overdose on pleasure and thrill and novelty. Over indexing that way cuts down on impact.

Building never stops, even when you do. Laying a foundation shapes human behavior at scale. Leads to more shoulders being stood upon. Higher order effects.

Every single person I admire made an impact.

I'm not my genes that I was built from or the genes that I might pass down. I'm the ideas and deeds of a short life that hopefully left lasting impact and caused second order effects.

> he also does not strike me as a villain like some of the modern day billionaires either

With Musk, doge, and the handling of important programs like USAID, that bar has been set remarkably low.

Interesting that his performance was essentially identical to the S&P over the past 30 years (Sortino 0.72 vs 0.69): https://testfol.io/?s=jJ4P0GrZxLi

I wonder how much is due to the market becoming more efficient, vs Berkshire's size / market impact?

How do you figure? The portfolio looks to have performed roughly the same as the S&P.

That is wild.

Ways it helps America:

* His shareholders include many Americans. The cash pile is concentrated as far as corporate governance is concerned, but lots of people own a piece of it in their retirement accounts. (Often indirectly via index funds.)

* Many employees work for businesses owned by Berkshire Hathaway. I'd guess they're pretty stable businesses, not about to get bought out and shut down? Maybe decent places to work? (Not sure about the railroad, though.)

* Many people are customers of these businesses. Mostly a good thing?

Admittedly there are lots of Americans that don't participate in that, though.

He’s no worse than CSX with public ownership. Rail workers are getting what they voted for - a dimishment of rights at the federal level and right to work crap that broke their union.

Don’t worship buffet, but study him. The Acquired podcast on him is a great jumping off point.

Why are you assuming that people aren't explicitly celebrating those negatives? Buffett is a capitalist, and the evils are part of the package. The majority of people here would do the same in a heartbeat to earn the same wealth and status.

In what world is he a “pseudo” philanthropist? He’s already given more than $60 Billion away and pledged to donate 99%+ of his wealth. He has also called for his class of ultra-wealthy to be taxed more

Buffet's strategy assumes a rational market, so I wouldn't expect it to work as well in an environment where stock market valuations are increasingly vibes-based and often wildly inflated by circumstances that should be illegal (like selling X to xAI to generate a voodoo valuation).

Arguably the entire market is heavily overvalued now, though, so while his strategies are probably no longer optimal, they'll probably continue to work out well enough at least until the next big correction.

> relatively unsophisticated investors like Musk and Zuckerburg

They're sophisticated government contractors. They've insulated themselves from the wiles of the market.

Musk and Zuckerberg, investing it's not their main thing they happen to have shares in companies they're CEO of, and their main activities it's managing them not investing

Musk and Zuckerberg are primarily entrepreneurs, not investors.

Undervalued, not underperforming. Companies that others overlook but have solid fundamentals and great strategy.

> I just asked ChatGPT

Please don’t do this.

> what Warren Buffett's strategy is, and it said buying undervalued companies and holding for a long time

No. It’s cheap leverage applied to low-volatility assets bought for a fair price [1]. (Munger got him off the ‘cigarette butt’ strategy of buying on the cheap.)

[1] https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w19681/w196...

An undervalued company is one that everyone else thinks is a loser but actually isn't - if you can identify that (and maybe make some adjustments to it) you can make a lot of money pretty quickly.

If it's undervalued it should be worth more, no?

He calls them "cigar butts." His analogy is that you collect enough of them, and you have a whole cigar.