40 years of Warren Buffet
Someone compiled ~4 decades of Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meetings into a really interesting audiobook.
Everyone knows Buffett and Munger. Every investor has heard their famous quotes and their theories, but this book allowed me to truly elevate my understanding of their ideas from a passing interest into something much more foundational.
It was wonderful.
Here is the Audible link:
Alex W. Morris
The most important thing I learned:
This book is boring and simple and there is magic in that.
Charlie and Warren repeat the same ideas over and over again to exhaustion, often with verbatim language. It's specifically in this simplicity and repetition that a true wisdom to be gained. Wisdom that I couldn't have appreciated 10 years ago.
I wouldn't say I learned many new ideas here, but there is something extremely powerful in listening to someone say the same thing over and over again for 40 years.
The tedious and repetitive nature of these lessons prove that Charlie and Warren are doing more than sharing good ideas - they are showing you how they have lived for their whole lives.
They are composed about their process through the decades. They don't chase trends, they don't worry about losses, they are ok with their mistakes, they don't have any envy of the success of others, and their investment philosophy is deeply aligned with their way of life. This is more than words, it's the ultimate skin in the game.
Other notable lessons:
Take fat deals
"We really like things that you don’t have to carry out to three decimal places… If you have to carry it out to three decimal places, it’s not a good idea.”
or
“If you need to use a computer or a calculator to make the calculation, you shouldn’t buy it.”
I sort of do this already purely because I'm bad at details, so I have to buy fat deals because I might be wrong about a bunch of small things. Hearing it from Buffett has bolstered my approach. If I buy a piece of real estate I want to buy at a 25-35% discount, maybe more. This way if I'm 5% off on my rehab or ARV or I'm slow on something, I don't have to sweat it.
UNH stock dropped 50% earlier this year. If you think it was 10% overpriced before the drop, you would scoop up as much as possible and not worry where the bottom is. Conversely, when I watch someone buy a near retail asset I wonder why they are bothering, where is the margin? I don't want to buy a 300k house for 295k. That's a 2% margin. What if you're wrong by 5%?.
It's just a good reminder to really find good deals and not to "just take action".
Be good at being bored
"If you make a few good decisions about what the future will be 10 years from now the biggest problem you're going to have between now and then is how to just sit on your ass." - a paraphrase of Charlie Munger
This is a difficult balance. You want to stay ready at all times to make big decisions but be ok with not making any if they don't work. In the military we called it "readiness" and it's difficult. It puts us in a state of constant alert but without much happening most times. Strategic boredom is no easy task.
There is an unending plethora of things that look like opportunity today. Palantir, Bitcoin, Nvidia, multifamily prices are coming down, gold is skyrocketing, and hundreds of thousands of other places to put cash. Worse, tons of people will make money on things you missed. It's difficult to be patient. It's difficult to be bored.
Part of how these two live this investing philosophy is by maintaining a low cost lifestyle. If you're buying assets for the long term or you're searching for deals the way you survive financially is to live light. None of these things are easy to do.
Limit the stupid
I have made a lot of investing mistakes in the past, and I will make more in the future. Thankfully my really good decisions have grossly out earned those costly mistakes. Hearing Warren talk about about his mistakes for 40 years is encouraging and it makes me a little less harsh on myself.
Investing isn't about making perfect decisions, it's about making sure the good ones are really big and the bad ones are as small as possible. It also means you have to make a lot of decisions to learn from the bad ones. The last few years I have been guilty of not being close enough to decisions to make any mistakes or good choices. From an investment standpoint, this is worse than making mistakes.
They talk about these types of mistakes, those of omission rather than commission. Deals they knew about, believed in, but didn't invest in heavy enough or at all. Courage of our ideas shows up as Skin in the Game. It's not what we think, it's where we actually place our resources that should be measured.
Why do I listen to anyone else
I had this weird moment of clarity a few months ago. I have filled my social circle with ambitious entrepreneurs and business owners but I don't much identify with that, I am an investor.
More importantly, why should I (or anyone) learn from someone who began investing 10 years ago when I can learn from Warren and Charlie?
Since that moment I have started to more carefully curate my social media feeds my communication with friends, and what type of events I have been attending. If someone is promoting a lifestyle or investment thesis that differs from the tried and true lessons these two have shared I don't have to think very hard about which I want to listen to. It's not going to be the person who learned all this stuff in the last decade and stands to gain an income from me, it's going to be from Charlie and Warren (and similar role models). This actually makes life very simple.
What appeals to me about Warren and Charlie is not their returns, it's their lifestyle. They look for clearly underpriced assets, when they are confident they have one they place large amounts of capital in those assets, they generate returns for their company and investors, and then they do nothing with their earnings! They have absolutely no lifestyle to speak of, and they seem to have no stress about the process.
This is my ideal way of life.
Whats next
My original investing idea was valid: buy underpriced real estate and sit on them forever.
Every single time I have deviated from this I have felt pain. Flipping, Airbnb, private lending, apartment buying, nothing has gone as well as my simple, boring, completely unsexy single family rental strategy.
Admittedly it's been difficult to find underpriced real estate for the last few years and I have been extremely patient, though not without second guessing myself every single day. Also to note, as I'm writing this in September 2025 I think this is the best time to buy RE in the last 5 years.
If you're casual fan of Charlie and Warren and want to deepen your knowledge I highly recommend this on audiobook. Also the person who put this together got 2 voice actors to read the shareholder meeting transcripts and they sound like Charlie and Warren so that's fun.
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