Warren Buffett has said “I just sit in my office and read all day.”
The Omaha World-Herald reported:
“Eventually finding and reading productive material became second nature [to Buffett], a habit. As he began his investing career, he would read even more, hitting 600, 750, even 1,000 pages a day.”
Warren Buffett says he reads a minimum of five to six hours a day. He reads from books, hundreds of pages of corporate reports, along with five newspapers each day. Buffett estimates he spends as much as 80% of his time on an average day reading.
During an interview Buffett was quoted as saying: “Read 500 pages like this every day. That’s how knowledge works. It builds up, like compound interest. All of you can do it, but I guarantee not many of you will do it.”
He does not read to learn other people’s opinions or predictions, he is a researcher of facts. “We don’t read other people’s opinions. We want to get the facts, and then think.” says Buffett.
“Charlie Munger, as a very young lawyer, was probably getting $20 an hour. He thought to himself, “Who’s my most valuable client?” And he decided it was himself. So he decided to sell himself an hour each day. He did it early in the morning, working on these construction projects and real estate deals. Everybody should do this, be the client, and then work for other people, too, and sell yourself an hour a day.” – Warren Buffett from ‘The Snowball’
“I read and think. So I do more reading and thinking, and make less impulse decisions than most people in business. I do it because I like this kind of life.” – Warren Buffett
In investing and trading you first need to have the right data and analytics before you can even begin to think about the right decision to make. Reading is the gateway to accumulate knowledge and information and only then do you have a chance to make the right decision based on all the facts. Reading can have one of the highest rates of return for any investment. The time and energy you invest in reading can pay you back a hundred or a thousand times.
In our time of easy access to Google and Kindle, good reading material has never been more quickly or easily available for free or at a very low cost. There is no excuse for not being able to learn anything you want when you have an internet connection and spend the time and energy to educate yourself.
Of course reading is only the first step, you still have to put what you learn into action through making the right decisions and doing the work necessary to reach your goals.
The Buffett Formula is said to be simply learning a little more every single day or “Going to bed smarter than you woke up.”
The simple act of consistently reading every day is one of Warren Buffett’s Holy Grail for investing success.
