Trade Like Warren Buffett
Cash Advance, Investing, Real Estate No Comments »Chapter 1 Does Warren Buffett Trade?
My favorite holding period is forever. – Warren Buffett
First, I have to apologize in advance. This book barely mentions Coca-Cola or the Washington Post. I also don’t really talk about the many fine companies that Berkshire Hathaway has bought over the past three decades (See’s Candies, the Pampered Chef, Dairy Queen, National Furniture Mart, and others). There are many excellent books that cover these topics. And while Warren Buffett has made billions of dollars from these investments, I don’t think I can add to the already great dialogue that has taken place on these topics.
Nor is this book really about value investing. There are many definitions of value investing and many treatises on value versus growth. But even Buffett has stated that on the whole, the distinctions between value and growth are nonsense. This book is about the various ways that Buffett has applied the concept of “margin of safety” outside of his buy-and-hold strategies. He has had a longer and more diverse investment career than just about anybody. There are several people in the world (fewer than ten, actually) who have had more years’ experience than Buffett at picking stocks, but I can think of no one who has traded and invested with a more diverse group of strategies over the past fifty years. It is these strategies that I write about. Many of them are normally thought of as “trading” strategies instead of the buy-and-hold investing for which Buffett is famous.
