One of our speakers today was the biographer of Warren Buffett, and she had some interesting anecdotes; one personal and two business.
On a personal note, she asked him what was the personal characteristic that made him so successful, and he responded with one word -- "focus." She looked around his large corner office and noticed the heavy, wooden shutters were all closed. The great view interfered with his focus.
Similarly, his wife told the story of one time when a bat somehow got into their house. Despite her hysterical screaming and the emergency workers she called, Buffett never removed his eyes from the computer screen where he was playing bridge online. He stayed focused!
From a business perspective, Buffett views cash differently. He is famous for maintaining very high levels of cash. Most investment advisors, however, are under pressure to minimize the level of cash in their portfolios. (Clients sometimes object to being charged a fee when the cash is "uninvested.") To him, cash is a call option on every asset class, and it never expires. Buying a call option gives you the right to buy a stock for a period of time, but it is expensive. Holding cash is very similar and a lot cheaper.
In addition, he sees risk not just as an absolute to be managed but a function of cumulative probabilities. Space does not permit a full discussion, but suffice it to say a powerful computer would get a migraine trying to compute such a number. In the final analysis, human judgement must estimate what computers cannot calculate.
Now, if I ignored my wife when a bat was flying around inside our home, I would be a dead investment advisor . . .
On a personal note, she asked him what was the personal characteristic that made him so successful, and he responded with one word -- "focus." She looked around his large corner office and noticed the heavy, wooden shutters were all closed. The great view interfered with his focus.
Similarly, his wife told the story of one time when a bat somehow got into their house. Despite her hysterical screaming and the emergency workers she called, Buffett never removed his eyes from the computer screen where he was playing bridge online. He stayed focused!
From a business perspective, Buffett views cash differently. He is famous for maintaining very high levels of cash. Most investment advisors, however, are under pressure to minimize the level of cash in their portfolios. (Clients sometimes object to being charged a fee when the cash is "uninvested.") To him, cash is a call option on every asset class, and it never expires. Buying a call option gives you the right to buy a stock for a period of time, but it is expensive. Holding cash is very similar and a lot cheaper.
In addition, he sees risk not just as an absolute to be managed but a function of cumulative probabilities. Space does not permit a full discussion, but suffice it to say a powerful computer would get a migraine trying to compute such a number. In the final analysis, human judgement must estimate what computers cannot calculate.
Now, if I ignored my wife when a bat was flying around inside our home, I would be a dead investment advisor . . .
