Warren Buffet - Dedication and Concentration

By Prasoon Kumar
The author Alice Schroeder mentions one story that aptly describes - the type of personality Warren Buffet has - it took place when one female friend of Warren Buffet stayed in the guest room of Ms. Graham and came out shocked to tell Buffet there was a real Picasso in the bathroom. Buffet told her he just noticed there was free shampoo available in the room. Other stories deal with the other power players such as Bill Gates and Akio Morita, in fact, Bill Gates is still considered as soul mate by Warren Buffet.

Right Book at the Right Time

The book The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life couldn't have arrived at the publishing scene at a better time. His prediction that the derivatives were weapons of mass destruction was bang on and the most accurate prediction (should we say prophecy) of the global economic meltdown. He was already aware of the dangers of government intervention and bailing out of failing banks by financial institutions.

Not a Perfect Book

The book is not without its problems. The first point is it is an authorized biography (you can't expect anything sensational) and the second point is the length of the book - it is simply too long (but so is the life of Warren Buffet and his illustrious career). Despite these negatives, the book is absorbing and you will be forced to set aside some time for the book. The author of the book Alice Schroeder has been a financial analyst herself so she knows what she is talking about while she writes the book.

Inner Business

The book The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life also concentrates on the inner business that goes on within the brain of Warren Buffet. The basic principle followed by Warren Buffet is to go by his inner scorecard rather than playing to the gallery. The other Wall Street tycoons were disgraced when things went wrong for them, Warren Buffet is different who didn't fall prey to the trappings of wealth even if he was making all the money in the world. Even when he bought a private jet, he named it The Indefensible, which aptly describes the feeling he might be going through when he bought it. He is unsophisticated and proudly (and deliberately) so. He eats only cherry Coke, fries and burgers. His rules for investing money are very simple, he avoids debt, and remains invested in the market over the long term.

Why Only One Warren Buffet?

You may ask if these things are so simple, why is there only one Warren Buffet. The answer is - to become Warren Buffet, you need to be fiercely independent in mind and everybody cannot maintain this frame of mind all the time. He did not participate in the dot com boom, because he did not understand the way these companies did their business. Now we all know the obvious, he was right.

Anyone Can Stick To Basics

Surely anyone could do that (stick to the basics), so why is there only one Warren Buffett? The answer is that it demands a resolute independence of mind that eludes other investors. It's not that he can easily convince the economists all the time. One group of economists came up with the Efficient Market Hypothesis and they said according to the theory, Warren Buffet simply couldn't exist. Their central belief was that individual investors couldn't consistently outperform the market. The theory was modified when Buffet pointed out his other eight peers were also doing equally well, since they were taught by the same teachers.