Customer Reviews

The World's Greatest Investment: 101 Reasons To Own Berkshire Hathaway

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I first read this book (not knowing at the time that it would be a book) as a series of email articles on the Motley Fool online discussion group. At the time, I appreciated Miles' energy in writing such a long series of articles. Then, as now, occasional thought-provoking nuggets appear within the general background of evangelical enthusiasm. However, there are better books about Berkshire and Buffett.

Spoiling what might have been decent book is the atrocious editing by the publisher, John Wiley. I do not remember ever having read a book that was this poorly edited. While we forgive the mistakes in emails, there is no excuse for a published book to appear with the same sloppiness. Many sentences in the book have to be read repeatedly to decipher what the author is trying to saying.

Like the original email source, Miles holds to a very colloquial style of writing. The problem is that it requires a great amount of effort by the reader to understand what Miles is saying. Commas are randomly strewn among rambling sentences. No apparent effort is made to improve the readability of sentences. Negligence abounds in style and grammar. This book is insulting to the reader, and an embarrassment to Warren Buffett. Don't major publishing houses have grammar checkers (human or otherwise)?

Miles is a businessman with some good opinions and no talent for writing. I do not hold that against him. The mystery is why a prestigious publisher would release a book that had not been edited? Wiley should be embarrassed to be associated with a book of this quality.

Not often does one have the luxury of someone so clearly defining the investment merits of a company and Robert Miles delivers in spades.

Security analysis and the study of investment theory should hopefully culminate in one finding and understanding the greatest vehicles for investment success. Robert Miles has made the investment process that much easier with his illumination of Berkshire Hathaway. I have probably read 90% of the material ever written by Warren Buffett or about Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway and this is as comprehensive as it gets. This is not just a book about Berkshire but a personal journey that identifies and understands the key ingredients of a successful investor. Berkshire Hathaway's outstanding long term performance should lay to rest academia's fascination with the efficient market theory. I believe that any stock investment made should be measured against the returns of Berkshire. This will eliminate many investment mistakes, heartaches and be very rewarding financially.

Robert refers to Warren's annual shareholders letters as the only investment book and advice that you will need. They represent the summit of investment thought from the greatest investor who has ever lived. Geico, Washington Post represent Warren's "ideal" of compounding tax free as long as possible. Shareholder's evidently take Warren's long term buy and hold strategy of stock investing to heart as share turnover in the company is a minuscule 3% a year. Ten thousand dollars invested in Berkshire seventeen years ago would be worth over one million dollars now.

Robert Miles openly shares his failures and triumphs of his 30 year journey of stock investing with the decisive point his investment in Berkshire Hathaway. Ultimately, investing is a reflection of one's character developed over the years and Robert understands the traits of a successful investor and vividly portrays them in this book.

Thanks for the great book Bob.

Even those who do agree with Buffett's philosophy will find this tough to digest. Unlike what Buffett writes, the writing here is not critical, analytical, thoughtful, or evaluative, but just a love-festing, hero-worshiping, paean of praise without reflection, analysis or explanation. From Buffett's own writings, nicely compiled in The Essays of Warren Buffett published by Cunningham, you get tools to answer hard questions like what is happening with Coke, Disney and Gillette; what's the outlook for Berkshire's insurance companies that have hit a rough patch lately; whether staying out of tech stocks in the era of the New Economy is good or bad for Berkshire; how to think about market prices; how to think about accounting numbers; and so on. Here what you get are just a lot of congratulations to Buffett for having come up with these ideas and explaining them to people.

This is a masterpiece! I have read many books on investing and money management, and this one tops my list. Why? Robert Miles breaks down Berkshire into an understandable analysis which anyone can comprehend. If you're one of the people like me who are fed up with getting ripped off by the fee based, high tax brokerage industry then you owe it to yourself and your heirs to read about Berkshire Hathaway. Mr. Miles explains why Berkshire will continue to outperform and also describes some creative strategies to live off your future wealth without incurring a load of capital gains taxes. This book explains Berkshire better than Warren's annual reports! You'll learn about the "hidden" pool of capital at Geico, why the General Re purchase was a home run, the huge advantage of Berkshire's cost free float, why anytime is the right time to buy, and why Berkshire continually smashes the rip off broker who is "managing" your hard earned capital. Knowledge is peace of mind, and after reading this you'll be smarter than your investment manager about the proper way to build wealth. Rest easy as your investment capital goes on autopilot....Even if you don't decide to buy Berkshire, you'll know the tough questions to ask your broker.

The shelves are full of books that are aimed at helping you learn how to invest like Warren Buffett does. I generally find those books to be a waste of time. If you want to invest like Warren Buffett, why not simply buy Berkshire Hathaway's stock? Well, this book takes the positive side of that perspective. In the process, you can learn much more about how Mr. Buffett has invested for himself and others at Berkshire Hathaway. Where most books about Mr. Buffett's work are overly simple and general, this one captures many fine subtleties. The book's main weakness is that Mr. Miles is not open to seeing the vulnerabilities for the future in Mr. Buffett's approach.

This book had an interesting genesis. It started as posts by Mr. Miles on the Motley Fool bulletin boards. I suspect that we will see more examples of this kind of authorship in the future, and think that it is a good idea. Authors get feedback on-line about their ideas, and can create a market for the book at the same time. Very nicely done!

The book contains literally 101 arguments in favor of buying and holding Berkshire Hathaway stock. I suspect that there was a target number set, because some of the arguments repeat each other. The appendix is very valuable in providing more fundamental perspectives on buying stocks for a new investor.

Space limits me from praising or critiquing each concept, so I will just focus on a few points. In doing this, though, you should realize that there is a lot of very solid and valuable material here.

First, just for the record, let me note that there are CEOs whose stocks have outperformed Mr. Buffett's record in the last 10 years. These are concentrated in the high technology and service business areas. I suspect that there will be more and more of these in years to come. My studies of the most successful CEOs show that these success rates are improving. Where Mr. Buffett was once near the top of the list, he increasingly is falling in the rankings. This is primarily due to his focus on avoiding technology investments. Those have been and will be the driving force of economic growth, and it's tougher to grow fast if you stick to the sidelines. As Mr. Miles points out, this avoidance does have advantages -- your stock is not as volatile on the downside (as we have seen in the last year or so).

Second, you will find it helpful to compare this book to John Bogle's excellent book, Common Sense About Mutual Funds, which makes the case for indexed fund investing. In many ways, Mr. Buffett outdoes the index funds -- by having lower management fees, less stock turnover, and fewer taxes incurred.

Third, Mr. Miles is in denial about that fact that Mr. Buffett is a man in his 70s. You will not be able to invest with Mr. Buffett after he is no longer active as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. While no one knows when that will happen, and no one wishes it to happen, it will happen regardless. Mr. Miles treats this like it could be the best thing that ever happened to the company. I would have liked to have seen more discussion about the downside risk. Avoiding risk and losses, after all, is what Mr. Buffett's approach is all about. I know of no investment vehicle that did as well after its founder retired.

Even if you have no interest in buying Berkshire Hathaway stock, you can learn a lot about good investing from seeing what Mr. Buffett does, as expressed here.

As to buying Berkshire Hathaway, for most people this would be a good move as an alternative to some of the funds they would otherwise put into mutual funds that are actively managed. But I would argue that no one should have more than 10 percent of their financial assets here. A lot of Mr. Buffett's big winners in the past (like Gillette and Coca-Cola) are having real problems. He is also fueling the company's growth with exotic insurance products. The world is full of people who found the market could turn on them in specialized financial services.

If you do want to buy this stock, wait until the current bear market on Wall Street is over. The stock will probably be cheaper then. But feel free to follow and learn about Berkshire Hathaway in the meantime.

A good thing to do is to think about who is going to be the next Warren Buffett and is younger, and invest some there as well. Who are your candidates? I have mine.

Achieve your financial goals, whatever they may be!

I've bought a number of investment and personal finance books over the years and had good investments and bad investments. Tried to time purchases and time sales. Booked profits, offset with losses. Paid taxes on mutual funds that lost money. Then I started with one share of BRK (to say I own a piece of Berkshire) and will plan to get many more. Miles shows that BRK is more than just Warren Buffett and stock picking. It's collecting good businesses that will continue to make money during all times and will prosper even when Buffett and Munger pass on. And when that time comes, I'm buying more. It'll be undervalued.

While Warren Buffett is without doubt the greatest investor of all time & Berkshire Hathaway has been a excellent investment for those who bought it in the 60s, 70s & even 80s, I disagree with the author's premise that you could buy this stock & expect it to continue to compound at historical levels...

I believe the author could have been a little more objective in what he has said. There are one or two very minor factual errors.

The author does make some very valid points regarding index investing & buy & hold strategies.

Other books on Berkshire focus on how an investor might emulate Warren Buffett's investment performance, are biography -- what made WEB the world's greatest investor -- or compilations of quotes. Only Bob Miles has addressed the intangibles of Berkshire Hathaway -- the many reasons an investor should own the stock in addition to its investment outperformance. Congratulations to Bob on successfully capturing a neglected side of BRK. Every Berkshire-follower should be interested in this book.

I just finished reading the 101 Reasons for owning Berkshire Hathaway book and found it very educational, enlightening, and exciting. Congratulations to Robert P. Miles on this outstanding contribution to our investment education and the clever way he made his points and presentation. I wish I had known its contents and wise counsel 30 years ago!

This is a compilation of a series of articles ( think technical blog) written by the author building a case to invest in Berkshire Hathaway. Certainly a compelling read of all the good reasons to invest in this company and why this company continues to be a value investment.