The Tao of Warren Buffett: Warren Buffett's Words of Wisdom: Quotations and Interpretations to Help Guide You to Billionaire Wealth and Enlightened Business Management (Hardcover)

by Mary Buffett (Author), David Clark (Author)
Key Phrases: durable competitive advantage, great investor, investment game, Wall Street, Wells Fargo, Washington Post Company (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"This is destined to be the business world's Little Red Book that investors and managers will resort to over and over. David Clark and Mary Buffett have again captured the heart, soul, and ethos of Warren Buffett - giving us practical, lasting strategies we can use to improve our financial performance."

-- Timothy Vick, Senior Portfolio Manager, The Sanibel Captiva trust Co., and author of How to Pick Stocks Like Warren Buffett

Product Description
A collection of pithy and inspiring sayings from America's favorite businessman that reveal his secrets of success

Like the sayings of the ancient Chinese philospher Lao-tzu, Warren Buffett's worldly wisdom is deceptively simple and enormously powerful in application. In The Tao of Warren Buffett, Mary Buffett -- author of three books on Warren Buffett's investment methods -- joins noted Buffettologist and international lecturer David Clark to bring you Warren Buffett's smartest, funniest, and most memorable sayings with an eye toward revealing the life philosophy and the investment strategies that have made Warren Buffett, and the shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway, so enormously wealthy.

Warren Buffett's investment achievements are unparalleled. He owes his success to hard work, integrity, and that most elusive commodity of all, common sense. The quotations in this book exemplify Warren's practical strategies and provide useful illustrations for every investor -- large or small -- and models everyone can follow. The quotes are culled from a variety of sources, including personal conversations, corporate reports, profiles, and interviews. The authors provide short explanations for each quote and use examples from Buffett's own business transactions whenever possible to illustrate his words at work.

As Warren says:

"You should invest in a business that even a fool can run, because someday a fool will."

"With enough inside information and a million dollars, you can go broke in a year."

"No matter how great the talent or effort, some things just take time: You can't produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant."

"Our method is very simple. We just try to buy businesses with good-to-superb underlying economics run by honest and able people and buy them at sensible prices. That's all I'm trying to do."

The Tao of Warren Buffett inspires, amuses, sharpens the mind, and offers priceless investment savvy that anyone can take to the bank. This irresistibly browsable and entertaining book is destined to become a classic.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Scribner (November 21, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1416541322
• ISBN-13: 978-1416541325
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #28,247 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

45 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars FABULOUS - JUST FABULOUS - COMPELLING EVEN - I cannot say enough about this book!!!!, March 24, 2007

By	Richard Stoyeck "StocksAtBottom.com" (Westport, CT) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book is in a class by itself, almost without equal. There are several reasons. Most of the time you have to read a whole book to find that one gem that made the book worthwhile. Sometimes it's one page you are looking for, once in a while, it's a paragraph. I have read many books for that one sentence that provides inspiration. When you say to yourself, "Why didn't someone write this book before," then you know you have a winner.


But this book, WOW - every page was a work of art. I have been studying Warren Buffett since 1968, about four decades of observing the master, and I have met him on several occasions when he sojourned down to Wall Street. When you read this book, this is what you will find.


The Tao of Warren Buffet is a short book with 125 different major thoughts in it. Each thought is a direct Buffett quote. In the back of the book is a bibliography, which will give you the attribution for each thought. For most of the 125 thoughts listed, the bibliography will also furnish an Internet web address to find the original source for the quote, whether it's an annual report, magazine article, or public speech, you will find the source.


In addition to the 125 thoughts, you will find about a page of narrative furnished by the authors, Marry Buffett (Warren's former daughter in law) and David Clark who is himself a Buffett watcher. They will be giving you clarification, and illustrations of the Buffett quote in action.


I'll found both the original quotes, and the author's narrative to be ABSOLUTELY FASICINATING. If you are involved in the stock market it is more than fascinating, it is COMPELLING. Here's the deal, there's no nonsense here. There's no filler. Mary Buffett's book is short in length, small in your hand, easy to carry, and loaded down with WISDOM. Here are a few of the pearls of wisdom you will find in this book, and then you decide if you should read it. I have indicated the number of the rule from the book.


Rule # 4 "You Can't Make a GOOD DEAL with a BAD PERSON."

This is spot on brilliant. You can't put enough energy into watching a thief, because a thief is busy being a thief 24 hours a day, and you might only have an hour to watch him. In addition, you can't install enough internal controls to safeguard against a dishonorable person. Just don't deal with those kinds of people.



Rule # 9 "Wall Street is the only place that people ride to in a Rolls Royce to get advice from those who take the subway."

Having spent 35 years involved with Wall Street, and currently being a Managing Partner of a national prominent investment-banking firm, I can't tell you how true this is. I have seen people barely competent, advising self-made billionaires on what to do with their money. The same is true for the firms themselves. Many of the billionaire clients are worth more than the firms arranging the financing. "Empty suits" is the expression we like to use.


Rule # 49 "It's only when the tide goes out, that you learn who's been swimming naked."

Enron is a perfect example of this witticism. The CPA's came in from Arthur Andersen, saw all this wealth. They saw helicopters landing on the top of the Enron building. They saw guys with $40 million paychecks, and they accepted whatever was handed to them as bona fide, as long as the $50 million check for the audit fee cleared the bank.



Rule # 57 "Never ask a barber if you need a haircut."

Is this brilliant or what? He's talking about Wall Street, brokers, investment advisors, financial planners, surgeons, and everybody with a private agenda. Brokers make their money by doing transactions, investment bankers by forcing the deal to happen, good, bad, or indifferent.


Rule # 68 You only have to do a very few things right in your life, so long as you don't do too many things wrong."

Buffett's net worth is in excess of $50 billion. My understanding is that 90% of that net worth has come from only 10 investment decisions, and you think you want to DAY TRADE.


Rule 74 "I buy expensive suits. They just look cheap on me."

Buffett did not buy an expensive suit until he was 60 years old. He figured out that $25,000 at 20% compounded growth for 20 years, was almost a million dollars. Who needs suits?


Rule# 112 "What we learn from history is that people don't learn from history."

Whether it's Viet Nam, Iraq, or investments, this is from the brain of a genius. If each of us could only understand the emotional truth of this statement and take it to heart, we would be so much better off, and so would our portfolios.


CONCLUSION


If you are an investor, I implore you to read "The Tao of Warren Buffett". It's short, easy to read, and will change your investing life. You will not have to go through the work of reading all of Buffett's public statements to find the gems. The sum total of his investment wisdom is in this book.


There is something to be said for going through the work yourself. I would rather see you read this book, if you will absorb the contents. I would pay my children to read it, and do give it to your investment advisors. If they say, "What's this," then it's time for NEW ADVISORS. Good luck to you


Richard Stoyeck

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Book With Some Contradictions, January 2, 2007

By	Brian Kodi - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Let me begin by stating unequivocally that this book is a gem for investors. There are many life lessons to be learned as well, but there are a few contradictions worth noting:

1. A quote from the biography of Mary Buffett who co-authored this book: "Throughout her twelve year marriage to Peter Buffett, Mary was often instructed not to speak to anyone outside the family about Warren's investment methods." Following her divorce, she retained the Buffett last name and spilled her beans on Warren's investment strategies without endorsements from Warren. I don't know Mary Buffett, but a little explaining of this behavior goes a long way when according to her, one of Warren's requirements in doing business is to do it with people of integrity.

2. David Clark, the co-author of this book is a portfolio manager. It's a bit ironic that according to these two authors, Warren consistently expresses a low opinion of money managers as short-sighted investors. A quote from page 145: "If the big fund managers weren't obsessed with the quick buck, Warren would never have been able to make all the great buys that he has built his career on."

3. While on the subject of contradictions, there's one from the man himself: In page 101 Warren says "the increase in life expectancy that a shift to a health-conscious diet might bring is not worth the decrease in the pleasure he would get from eating less junk food," referring to his steady diet of "Coke, hamburgers and inch-thick steaks." In page 91, "Warren sees the human mind and body as being kind of business asset, your business, your asset... take care of them and make them strong." This may be a case of the preacher not following his own advice.

Contradictions aside, this book contains lots of basic common sense advice about investing and life in general. It's a quick read that should be a requirement for everyone, investor or not.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Explaining the self-explanatory, November 3, 2007

By	Barebones (Toronto, Canada) - See all my reviews

Warren Buffett's sayings are funny, profound, and self-explanatory. This book quotes 125 of those sayings, following each with a brief, humorless "interpretation," which, at best, adds nothing to the original, and in some cases misses the whole point.

For a better sense of how this great investor thinks, read any of the recent annual reports of Berkshire Hathaway.