What books did Warren Buffett read to become successful?
Warren Buffett attributes much of his success from what he learned directly from Benjamin Graham and Philip Fisher along with their books that he could both read and study. Here are a list of the top books Buffett has recommended in interviews, in shareholder letters, or at his Berkshire-Hathaway annual meetings.
Fisher was one of Buffett’s biggest influences as he looked at growth and the future earning potential of companies not just the current price and value. Fisher saw buying a stock as buying the future income stream of a company, a little different strategy from value investing.
This is a business book that Buffett said was one his favorites. It consists of New Yorker articles from the 1960s that tell some great business stories written in a easy to read narrative. My favorite one was the story about the Ford disaster mismanaging the Edsel. Lots of business lessons can be found in these pages.
This book uses humor to explain many important lessons about how brokers and money managers operate on Wall Street to make money. Buffett that it was a really funny book.
This book is considered to be one of the top 100 books of all time as he forecasted the world economies and solutions to economic depression using Keynesian economics for government support. His accuracy in predictions and solutions made him a legend as an economist.
“Reading Keynes will make you smarter about securities and markets. I’m not sure reading other economists would do the same.” – Warren Buffett
Bogle was the genius behind the simple but effective invention of the S&P 500 index fund that outperforms most money managers over the long term by owning the market they have so much trouble beating. The edge is in the index tracking, low management expenses, and minimal transaction costs. Buffett has said for most people buying and holding the S&P 500 index for the long term is the right strategy.
This book is a biography of Charlie Munger that summarizes his wisdom on how he thinks about life, business, and investing. Buffett is Munger’s biggest fan and highly recommends this book.
Buffett has said “Picking up that book was one of the luckiest moments of my life.” about Graham’s value investing bible. Buffett loved the book so much that he enrolled in Columbia University to take Graham’s classes and later went to work for him to learn as much as possible directly from him. This is his #1 pick of all books.
This book teaches how to develop your own investing strategy along with many stories from his own life. It focuses on the principles of profitable investing.
This book tells the stories of CEOs that operated businesses that outperformed the S&P index by a factor of 20 and how they did it by being different.
Bogle gives 10 simple rules for investing that work, ignoring complexity and wild risky speculation.
The author shares the story of Brazilian trio behind the success of private equity group 3G capital a frequent Buffett business partner in deals.
What does Warren Buffet read every day?
Buffett spends 80% of his day reading and he is said to have read 600-1000 pages a day when he was younger and continued to read 500 pages a day for most his life. [1]
He reads six newspapers a day, which includes The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, The New York Times, USA Today, Omaha World-Herald, and American Banker. [2] He believes that it’s important to get into the habit of reading what you can every day and keep learning and growing.
His business partner Charlie Munger agrees, “We read a lot. I don’t know anyone who’s wise who doesn’t read a lot. But that’s not enough: You have to have a temperament to grab ideas and do sensible things. Most people don’t grab the right ideas or don’t know what to do with them.”
“Go to bed smarter than when you woke up.” – Charlie Munger
Has Warren Buffett written a book on investing?
Warren Buffett has not written a book on investing or an autobiography, the closest thing that exists to an autobiography of Buffett is the book The Snow Ball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life by Alice Schroeder. The closest thing written to an investing book by Buffett is his annual Berkshire Hathaway shareholder letters.
Before The Snow Ball was written, Buffett rejected all the other biographers, journalists, authors and publishers that offered to work with him on turning his life story into a book.
After being the only Wall Street analyst Buffett would speak to for six years, Alice Schroeder was asked by Buffett to write his biography. She left her job in 2003 at Morgan Stanley and moved to Omaha to work on the book as her new full-time job.
Schroeder read Buffett’s personal files for more than 2,000 hours. She also interviewed Buffett, his wife, children, sisters, friends, and associates in business. Before she began writing the book, Buffett told her he wouldn’t ask for any revisions once the book was finished, and where accounts of his life differed, to always use the “less flattering version.”[3]
Warren Buffett has shared his investing and business wisdom in his annual Berkshire Hathaway shareholder letters from 1977-2021. They are publicly available online at berkshirehathaway.com/letters/letters.html.
There are many gems inside these letters that have also been used to construct books about Buffett’s investing strategy, how he operates Berkshire-Hathaway, and what he looks for in acquiring new businesses. He also discusses the economy and the stock market in these letters he wrote himself each year.
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