Brett

This is my fault for making a thread in both places! Thank you, KPO!

Thank you Stuart!

Thank you! I'm really glad you enjoyed his gumshoe research, I was surprised at the volume of work he did on this front. It's so impressive. A quick story on Amex: it was actually a late addition to the book, I had submitted the manuscript already before deciding to write about it. I decided to put it in for a couple reasons, despite the fact it's been written about quite a bit: 1. The company it replaced wasn't all that fun and I couldn't verify a key fact in the chapter, so I left it out. 2. I thought there were some parts of the American Express story not thoroughly covered: the intricacies of the salad oil scandal (some folks told me I went into too much detail... but I love the detail personally), Buffett's delayed entry into the position (I had it in the back of my head for years that he bought the stock right after the scandal, rather than waiting months to do so), the scaling of the position, and also the history of American Express itself.

Thank you! It's a huge honor to get in Jason Zweig's column! His book Your Money and Your Brain is one of the first books I read when I started getting into finance. And obviously he's done such a great job with The Intelligent Investor editions over the years (including the one that came out two months ago--which I highly recommend).

I have never been lucky enough to meet him, but had 3 interactions that are fun to talk about: 1. I wrote to him--years prior to deciding to write the book--asking for the memo on Cleveland Worsted Mills. I get a letter back a few weeks later from his assistant telling me it wasn't accessible, but to check Security Analysis (which it was--third edition!). His memory is amazing. 2. I requested an interview once I decided I was going to write it (in 2021). I sent along a letter and a few documents I thought he might get a kick out of (and also to show that I was trying to do a serious research project... whether I was successful in this will obviously be judged by all of you!). I didn't expect a response, but I get an email via his assistant politely declining but wishing me luck. 3. I sent him two copies once I received my physical books and asked if he could sign one and send one back, which he very generously did. I was thrilled, it's my most prized possession! Now you also asked if he read it... I have no idea. I assumed no, but his quote in the WSJ made me wonder!

Of course! I came across so much fun stuff that just didn't make it into the book! I tried to set a high bar for what made it in, but there was some stuff I knew folks would like and had to share it somewhere! Thank you all for the kind reception! If you enjoy the book, please do give it a review on Amazon! These are very helpful (and I love hearing all your thoughts)!: https://amzn.to/49jdNtR

Thank you, I hope you love it! On your first question: Net-net investing, particularly in the U.S., HAS gotten much tougher. There are objectively fewer of them as the economy has shifted from being dependent on property, plane, and equipment to tangible assets being a minority of those for the companies in the S&P 500. With that said, there are still these types of opportunities on the fringes (and more internationally!). You only need 1 or 2 a year to make your returns. Can Buffett find that one or two? Yeah, I think so. It's possible it would be international than here, and my guess is it may be in even smaller companies. I'd add, Buffett also did a lot of arbitrage, and he would also use this. I think he would pivot to companies more dependent on the earnings a little sooner than he did if he were running today, especially as he scaled, but he would still do a lot of balance sheet-oriented investing / activism. On the second question, I think he can definitely get 50% on $1 million deploying broadly the same tactics he did in the pre-partnership years and the first half of the partnership (he did fewer net-nets in the second half of the partnership, such as Amex and Disney). I think the anchor scale presents is pretty drastic, though. Meaning the returns on $10 million are way worse, $100 million are way worse than that, etc. I think there are a lot more investors that had outstanding returns for 10+ years than is commonly known. But they sort of stop investing other people's capital after accumulating their initial fortune.

This is my exact take while researching and I'm so thrilled to hear the point came across! Buffett was blessed with some abilities: high IQ, natural mathematical abilities. But he got to where he was through hard work. We are not all going to be Warren Buffett--but we can still be successful investors (or we can thrive at whatever endeavor we choose!).

Thank you all for your kind comments! I really appreciate it. You made all that work worth it!

I posted about this in the Berkshire forum, but was moving over here. I am the author of the book--I hope you all enjoy it! I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you! That's a good idea! I hope you enjoy my book.

Thank you so much, Eric! That is a very generous offer and would be incredible--assuming you like it!

Of course! Hochschild Kohn was as private company when Diversified Retailing bought the company in 1966. But they had a number of stockholders (all family) and issued debt, so they put together some annual reports. HK was a critical company to the Baltimore community, so one of the local libraries had a whole host of company documents, including annual reports! In terms of finding old annual reports, these are some great websites: https://apps.lib.purdue.edu/abldars/ https://www.lib.ua.edu/libraries/bruno/annual-reports/ The Mergent archives, a database that some public libraries, such as the New York Public Library, have is a great resources as well. They have a ton of them on PDF that you can download.

Ha! Of course, will always remember you folks. To answer your other question: I had a much harder time finding enough investments on Charlie's partnership to write about. His documents aren't public, so I don't know enough of his positions. Kilpatrick's book has 1950 and 1951, and then I had to piece together the rest from The Snowball... so the answer is no! Thank you! Have you seen this video by her? She does a great job here of analyzing it.

I'd say three things: 1. The degree to which Buffett was concentrated not only in his partnership but throughout his Berkshire years. I had an idea but the data surprised me! 2. The level of gumshoe / detective work Buffett did. People think Buffett got rich reading Moody's Manuals... It's a gross oversimplification. He burned a lot of shoe leather to uncover differentiated insights into companies. 3. The amount of activism Buffett performed in these early days, and how it informed the creation of Berkshire Hathaway. My favorite chapter in the book is Philadelphia and Reading--I think you can draw a straight line from P&R to Berkshire. Buffett saw all the levers a control investor could pull to create value... and then did the same with Berkshire!