Book review: THE TAO OF WARREN BUFFETT
Warren Buffett's Words of Wisdom - Quotations and Interpretations to Help Guide You to Billionaire Wealth and Enlightened Business Management
Genres:
- Finance and Investing
- Economics
Review posted on:
09.03.2016
The number of pages:
192 pages
Book rating:
2/5
Year the book was published:
First edition published 2007
Who should read this book:
- People interested in Finance and Investing.
Why did I pick up this book and what did I expect to get out of it:
Almost everyone knows who Warren Buffett is and what he achieved. But how did he do it and can I, you or anyone else achieve the same or at a lower scale as he did? Well, that is one of the main reasons why I picked up The Tao of Warren Buffett written by Mary Buffett and David Clark, to learn more about how he did it. I’m certain that Mary Buffett as a person who was close to Warren can share some of his “little secrets of success” with an in-depth “footnote” or two. Since the book is a collection of Buffett’s quotes and interpretations of the author of those quotes I hope and expect this to be more than just a quote and the authors’ thoughts about the quote. I expect that the authors will do some background explanation that will give some background to the quote and an in-depth interpretation with real-life examples of what when and how this happened.
My thoughts about the book:
The TAO of Warren Buffett is an easy-to-read book, one of those you might want to pick up on a lazy Sunday and not think too much about what you are reading. The quotes from Warren Buffett are in most cases self-explanatory but the authors still try to justify writing this book and try to “add value” by writing explanations that are often childish, and the ideas themselves become very repetitive about two-thirds of the way through the book. To be fair, the quotes are interesting and provide a glimpse into how Warren Buffett thinks about investing, but the explanations of the authors do not add any value to the book. You can easily get the book and just read the quotes, you don’t need to read the accompanying explanations, as if you don’t you will save time. I was disappointed in a big way as the authors provide little or no context or background to the quotes and very little value when trying to interpret the quotes.
If you picked up this book please let me know what you think about it in the comment section.
My notes from the book:
- Never be afraid to ask for too much when selling or offer too little when buying.
- Wall Street is the only place that people ride to in a Rolls-Royce to get advice from those who take the subway.
- It’s not necessary to do extraordinary things to get extraordinary results.
- Be comfortable standing alone.
- You want to learn from experience, but you want to learn from other people’s experiences when you can.
- Conviction is based on what you know will happen. Faith is based on what you hope will happen. To make money in the investment game you need to have conviction, which means you need to know what you are doing.
- There is a huge difference between a business that grows and requires lots of capital to do so and a business that grows and doesn’t require capital. If a business needs lots of capital to grow, it will never make you rich, and if it doesn’t need lots of capital to grow, it won’t ever leave you poor.
- You don’t have to make money back the same way you lost it.
- You get rich off investments not by following the herd, but by identifying stocks that Wall Street doesn’t want today, but will be dying for tomorrow.
- You need to study not only what to do, but what not to do.
- Sometimes what you don’t do is just as important as what you do.
- If you let yourself be undisciplined on the small things, you will probably be undisciplined on the large things as well.
- There is nothing like writing to force you to think and get your thoughts straight. If you can’t write about it, you haven’t really thought about it.
- The most important thing to do if you find yourself in a hole is to stop digging.
- If you don’t make mistakes, you can’t make decisions. Some people can make decisions and some people can’t. The ones who can lead, and the ones who can’t follow. Part of making decisions is making mistakes.
- What we learn from history is that people don’t learn from history.
- No matter how great the talent and or effort, some things just take time.
- I look for businesses in which I think I can predict what they’re going to look like in ten to fifteen years’ time. Take Wrigley’s chewing gum. I don’t think the internet is going to change how people chew gum. When investing focus on determining the long-term economic value of the company.
