Buffettology (by Mary Buffett) 1 comments

Mary Buffett is a former daughter-in-law of Warren Buffett and she wrote this book in 1997 to describe his investment techniques, capitalising on her previous proximity to the billionaire.

There are countless books on Warren Buffett and nowadays I groan when I spot another new batch of such books hit the shelves at Borders. His stock investment techniques have been dissected so thoroughly from so many angles that I wonder perhaps that is why he has switched his attention to currencies of late, haha. I can just relate point by point the characteristics of his technique as described in so many books: thinking about the business instead of the stock, buy a strong business and hold forever, owning concentrated portfolios, the magic of compounding, look for consumer monopolies, buying during a market crisis. These are the standard points of the Warren Buffett investment philosophy.

And that is what is covered in this book. Some books are essentially biographies of Warren Buffett with bits of his investing philosophy thrown in, but Mary Buffett has chosen to place the spotlight directly on his investment philosophy. There is at least a chapter for every point I have outlined above, and also Mary Buffett tries to find examples in those companies that Warren Buffett has invested in over the years.

Depending on the reader, this would either be a very useful book or a boring book. For the starting investor, one of the most important things is to formulate an investing philosophy (eg. momentum trading or buying downtrodden value?) and one of the best ways to do this is to read up on well-proven and logically coherent ones like Warren Buffett's. In this respect Mary Buffett has done a good job with her outline on the main points of his philosophy. On the other hand, for more seasoned investors, it might be a bit of a bore as there is a lack of new insights and the book often drones on monotonously. There are also too many numerical examples which tend to make the reader sometimes feel like he is studying a textbook.