University of Berkshire Hathaway

30 Years of Lessons Learned from Warren Buffett & Charlie Munger at the Annual Shareholders Meeting

By: Daniel Pecaut, Corey Wrenn - contributor

Narrated by: Tom Parks

Length: 12 hrs and 21 mins

Publisher's Summary

Will there ever be another investing book quite like this? It's unlikely. 

University of Berkshire Hathaway is a remarkable retelling of the lessons, wisdom, and investment strategies handed down personally from Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger to shareholders during 30 years of their closed-door annual meetings. 

From this front row seat, you'll see one of the greatest wealth-building records in history unfold, year by year.

If you're looking for dusty old investment theory, there are hundreds of other books waiting to cure you of insomnia. However, if you're looking for an investing book that's as personal as it is revelatory, look no further.

Packed with Buffett and Munger's timeless, generous, and often hilarious wisdom, University of Berkshire Hathaway will keep serious investors listening late into the night:

• Get unique insight into the thinking, strategies, and decisions- both good and bad - that made Buffett and Munger two of the world's greatest investors.
• Understand the critical reasoning that leads Buffett and Munger to purchase a particular company, including their methods for assigning value. 
• Learn the central tenets of Buffett's value-investing philosophy "straight from the horse's mouth." 
• Enjoy Munger's biting wit as he goes after any topic that offends him. 
• Discover Buffett's distaste for "commonly accepted strategies" like modern portfolio theory. 
• See why these annual meetings are often called "an MBA in a weekend."

©2018 Daniel Pecaut & Corey Wrenn. (P)2018 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

Great disappointment / false advertisement

One example to false advertisement: "University of Berkshire Hathaway is a remarkable retelling of the lessons, wisdom, and investment strategies *handed down personally* from Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger to shareholders during 30 years of their closed-door annual meetings. "
When one reads this, it sounds like the author had one-on-one with Warren Buffett, and Charlie Munger, whereas the information is actually from annual meetings of the company, and sometimes there are up to 40000 people there. Yes, Warren is there and is handing down the information personally, but it is not really in person, and looks like the information gets dilluted!

The title, description, and such gives you the impression that you will get some insight to investing, but the advices in the book, like "buy a company to a good price" will be relevant after you make your first hundred millions, and if you came that far, you probably know mentors similar to Warren Buffet in person, and don't and won't need this book.

There is nothing of substance that one could defend the use of "University" in the title of the book.

Pretty much "buy good companies". It is one thing to use weeks or months of time to figure out "the one company" when you will make hundreds of millions, because you have billions to invest. It is totally another thing when your budget is limited, as the budget of most of the people who buy this book. For them the advice should be "avoid this book, you can use that time to make more money if you invested in doing something else than using time to find a good company".

A lot of stories that might be interesting, but lessons boils down to "Don't lose money", "Invest wisely", without giving any usable advice to how to accomplish that. Sounds wise and everything, but useless in practice.

The last drop was the annoyence of repeating how many dollars was Berkshire Hathaway 30 years ago, and then repeat this with every year, that is 30 times, spending many minutes on that. And then repeating of the same thing, for example, float, float, float, as if it would help me. It turns out float is something banks and insurance companies have (thus Berkshire Hathaway has via one of the companies they own). Useless to me (the majority of the book's audience), again billions of dollars, that you invest further. How wonderful, any of that float lying around for 100$?

If an author / publisher wastes my time by a book that should have been 30 minutes, and bloats it to 12 hours that I have to sip through the minimum information I could gather, that tells me how much the author / publisher value other people...
Since the Warrent Buffet name sells, I assume millions of people are fooled into paying for this book, millions of hours wasted. Who cares? I do. It is too late for me. Save yourself.

Lesson learnt: If the author and publisher is the same, maybe that book did not get the editor's investment, and maybe I should take it as a sign that the quality of content might disappoint.

It was so insightful

I loved the book. I am new to investing and I dont have a background in anything finance related but I was able to still derive value. It is the type of book that you have to listen more than once and make a lot of notes. My favourite part was the advice Warren gave about investing in yourself by learning everyday. My key take away was the importance of going to bed smarter than you woke up. Knowledge compounded over time is the best investment.

great listen

listened everyday on my commute to work. often clocked in late due the the inability to stop between chapters. Sorry nick! (my employer)

Worthwhile even for Buffetphiles.

Good listen. Could have been more thorough, but hits on about 80% of the Berkshire story. Never became boring except for the 30 second chapter intro. Excellent audio presentation. Easy to listen to.

Consistent message hammered home over 30 years

Neat document and insight into the workings of BH. Really though, the information to glean could be summarized in a 3-5 pages: Buy good companies at bargain prices, go against the herd, the best investment is always yourself and your own learning, always continue to learn, Sees candy is a great business, nuclear diaster is emenent, choose your friends wisely, corporate options are poison, derivatives are a mess, and choose the right parents. That really covers a lot of the book, it's just repeated over and over. So it's a good to have a document showing Buffet and Munger's consistency. There are also moments when you realize they are speaking before major events happened and you have insight to how prescient they are.

Great information!

Provided great insight into the minds of some of the best investors of all time. Invaluable information for learning business and investment strategies from experts. Loved the way they talked about their mistakes as well. Well worth the time.

Two thumbs up

Great audio summary of lessons from Shareholders' Meetings. Some reviews said this seems repetitive but I did not felt that that was the case. It said at the end that some parts were cut to avoid being repetitive so it may have been revised since then. Either way, I did not mind at all how some concepts were repeated and stressed.

Primary Source on Berkshire

This book is a great source to study the rise of the greatest holding company the world has ever seen. Buffet and Charlie give a full MBA. I don’t know how you can justify paying for a MBA with all the information available for free.

Learning a lot, just by listening.

Best way to learn about Berkshire Hathaway and the People who run it. Buffet, Munger, and their managers. I've listened to this book at least 3 times, maybe 5... and I'm still learning from it.

Awesome

I enjoyed the book and its style. Distilling the wisdom shared over many decades at the annual meetings. By the end, I felt like I attended all of them. Thanks

Well presented and convenient record of the annual talks and questions

This was a great way to hear what was said during the Berkshire Hathaway annual meetings, all in one collection, with various repetition removed. Very interesting and educational.

On the importance of accounting

The thing that stroke me in this book is how much Buffet talks about accounting. He repeatedly calls accounting 'the language of business". This made me think of the reasons why I, my passion from early on being the study of languages, ended up running an accounting company. Buffet, the most successful investor of our time, based most of his investment decisions on the information he got from reading annual reports, which he contrasts to informational noise in other sources. The importance of accounting is probably the most important idea I derived from this book.

Awesome!!!

Loved every bit of this book. I found it difficult to take a break from listening

Great!

A great journey through time! Love what has been done to Berkshire in the last 20 years.

Excellent

I loved this book - it would have been 5 stars, but as an audiobook there are perhaps more numbers and stats than the reader (or at least, this reader) can meaningfully capture and make use of.

In spite of that, though, it is an enjoyable and insightful journey into the World and, more importantly, the thinking and mindset of Warren and Charlie.

After reading a few books on Warren Buffet, this was the one that inspired me to finally buy share in Berkshire Hathaway.

very interesting

good redaction. Easy to listen too and for any person, financial or not. I hope to see a new version with the most current years in it.

A wealth of information for any investor at any level of experience!!

This was a brilliant listen for the “young investor” developing his / her knowledge in the quagmire of investing. It was also a precious gem of intelligence for an investor at any level of experience. There were many critical insights which continue to apply today.

I took notes and will re listen to maximise on the learning of key points and put them into practice. The information was enriching and the narrator held my interest from start to finish.

I would highly recommend this audiobook if you have any interest in the world of investing and heed the lessons.

Good book

Great summary of past meetings with key thought and conclusions brought out. highly recommend