Warren Buffett's Ground Rules

Words of Wisdom from the Partnership Letters of the World's Greatest Investor

By: Jeremy C. Miller

Narrated by: Tom Perkins

Length: 10 hrs and 11 mins

Publisher's summary

Using the letters Warren Buffett wrote to his partners between 1956 and 1970, a veteran financial advisor presents the renowned guru's "ground rules" for investing - guidelines that remain startlingly relevant today.

In the 14 years between his time in New York with value-investing guru Benjamin Graham and his start as chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett managed Buffett Partnership Limited, his first professional investing partnership. Over the course of that time - a period in which he experienced an unprecedented record of success - Buffett wrote semiannual letters to his small but growing group of partners, sharing his thoughts, approaches, and reflections.

Compiled for the first time, and with Buffett's permission, the letters spotlight his contrarian diversification strategy, his almost religious celebration of compounding interest, his preference for conservative rather than conventional decision making, and his goal and tactics for bettering market results by at least 10 percent annually. Demonstrating Buffett's intellectual rigor, they provide a framework to the craft of investing that had not existed before: Buffett built upon the quantitative contributions made by his famous teacher, Benjamin Graham, demonstrating how they could be applied and improved.

Jeremy Miller reveals how these letters offer us a rare look into Buffett's mind and offer accessible lessons in control and discipline - effective in bull and bear markets alike and in all types of investing climates - that are the bedrock of his success. Warren Buffett's Ground Rules paints a portrait of the sage as a young investor during a time when he developed the long-term value-oriented strategy that helped him build the foundation of his wealth - rules for success every investor needs today.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.

©2016 Jeremy C. Miller (P)2016 HarperCollins Publishers

most boring billionaire's rant I've ever heard

A collection of deeply meaningful lessons of how to identify value and make it count. But if you are looking for entertainment you are in the wrong place. Or you need to listen to it several times

Investment forecasting

Warren Buffet’s insightful metrology and strategy continues to act as roadmap for anyone looking to understand basic to complex investing from stocks, dividends and bonds. His strategies are easily understandable and adaptable for any investor to utilize daily.

book info little confusing 🤔

was not able to follow up with use of letters throughout the book. the author tried hard to read these letters to pass specific message which was never clear as it uses buffets and friends names

Rehashing on Buffett

Similar to most other Buffett books. Nothing new for the studied Buffett, value investor. The book is not bad, and is likely a good read for the most novice investor.

Absolutely fantastic

At a young age Warren Buffett knew (and now taught me through this book) multiple important tenets to success:
1) incentives must be aligned or you get left holding the bag
2) compound interest is indeed the 8th wonder of the world
3) nice guys can finish first
4) you can't start investing early enough (see #2)
5) it's not how much you make, it's how much you keep that matters

Tremendous insight into Buffets thinking

I have consumed 17 investing books in the last year, attended workshops, taken classes, done much of my own investing and studying, most of it targeted around Buffett-style (or Graham-Dodd) investing. No where have I seen his thoughts so cleanly articulated, and given with context of when they are written. A must-read for any Buffett-acolyte.

Read this as a preview to Graham-style analysis

Insightful book into Buffett's thinking prior to his partnership with Munger in Berkshire Hathaway. During this time Buffett ran the Buffett Partnership Limited, as it's principal, and earned an average of 20 to 30% per annum on his fund, which is a spectacular performance, even during what came to be known as the "30 Glorious Years".

The structure of the book is to provide a preface to each of Buffett's letters, breaking down the letters into snippets and extending the quoted with historical context and deeper analysis/explanations, mostly through a gentle introduction to Ben Graham's concepts of investing, which Buffett favoured during this time.

What makes this book a nice bridge for those who are interested in the history of ideas in applied finance, is that it charts Buffett's evolution in thinking from the Graham "cigar butt" philosophy of investing in penny stocks, with the "free puff", to his more nuanced strategy of searching for "deep value" from securities through discovery of superior management staff of those firms. The book outlines Graham/Buffett asset accounting decision criterion for investment, which I think is the current market price of stock multiplied by total shares over the total recoverable capital from liquidation. Buffett and his partners used many of these sorts of ratios and metrics many years before P/E was a common column in any analyst's sheets.

This book is probably best read after reading something like Snowball, the biography on Buffett and/or Graham' s security analysis. Although I have yet to read the later. Conditional recommend

Good, but dated

Content is good—however, the focus is during the partnership years only, pre Berkshire Hathaway. Had I realized that I would have skipped this job favor of a book with more recent advice from Buffet.

A timeless classic

Looking back at how Warren & Charlie created the foundation for their incredible success in finance and investing. Timeless lessons to help guide another generation of investors.

It's ok.

The book repeats itself a lot. I finally got sick of it after several hours.