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When I heard the news of last week that Warren Buffett had decided to give up his powerful Berkshire Hathaway empire, at the age of 94, he reminded me of something that has bothered me for years.
It is related to the annual letters of the great investor to the shareholders of Berkshire. For decades they have been one of the most insightful documents in the financial world, cheers and best readers. Finally cited. Collected in books. Hugely educational.
Buffett had help. Financial Journalist Carol Loomis edited The letters. Even so, how do many other financial weights, with so many assistants and so many resources, cannot produce annual letters that coincide with those of Buffett? Many are perceptive, of course. But why don’t they implement briefness, ingenuity and humility that makes Buffett’s letters so successful?
I guess many do not want.
One of the great merits of a Buffett letter is the number of times it admits, or delights, something that others pay small armies of people and lawyers of Wall Street to bury: an error.
“During the 2019-23 period, I used the words ‘error’ or ‘error’ 16 times in my letters to you,” he wrote in his latest Letter in February, noting that the claim of management perfection made him nervous.
He has actually been writing about his “Non -forced errors“, Silly decisions and expensive errors for much longer. But here is a 2021 classic on a”Ugly $ 11 billion Writtown, “he said that Berkshire was almost due to 2016 buys of the manufacturing group Precision Casts. “I paid too much,” he wrote, and added that this was “far from my first mistake of that guy. But it’s big.”
You could say that such admissions are easy if it has spent six decades making many of its millionaire shareholders. And despite all their confessions, readers could still see that buffet’s results were surprising.
But one could also say that in the face of wrong steps it helps explain that success. In any case, it generates a degree of confidence that is not always given to the great and well financial that meets every year in Davos: a buffet meeting has never attended.
Latest Annual letter From Blackrock, Larry Fink is more typical of the cautious tariff that is served to shareholders.
Start with a touch of charm similar to buffett. “Since 1976, when I appeared for my first work of Wall Street: look long hair, turquoise jewelry and the most ugly brown suit in the world, the investment has become much more fashionable (and, fortunately, I have done so).”
It is also admirably free of jargon and the word “error” appears, once. But it refers to what Fink says that it is a repetition of the “historical error” of the financial world of abundant capital deployed too limited, not to any error that he or his colossal company may have committed.
The last shareholder letter From Jamie Dimon by Jpmorgan Chase, on the other hand, he has a section with heading “I made mistakes.” He reveals that he underestimated the importance of cloud technology and mentions the case of the merchant known as the London whale, who lost at least $ 6 billion for the bank in 2012.
Unfortunately, one does not reach this section until page 53 of a document that runs 58 inexcusable pages. Even Fink managed to contain his thoughts just 27 this year. Buffett has Averaged only 17 Pages in the last 10 years.
There is an executive director of a large global company whose annual and legible annual letters include occasionally Admissions of failure.
It is Andy Jassy de Amazon, who has continued in the style of Jeff Bezos, the founder of the Jassy company replaced in 2021.
Even so, I cannot imagine that any of these leaders write such memorable lines as buffett, because even if they share their sense of humor, none seems so happy to show it.
My favorite line was in the Baffett letter for 2007: “If a capitalist with a vision of the future had been present at Kitty Hawk, he would have made his successors a great favor of Orville shot below.”
I also liked yours Observation of 1982 that “investors can always buy toads at the current price of toads.” And others from his Ilk.
But he feels suitable to end his 2023 reminder How some investment winners can overcome disappointments. “Weeds wilt with importance as flowers flourish,” he wrote. “And yes, it is useful to start early and also live in the 90s.”