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Even as trading and markets moved faster, Warren Buffett made patience profitable and cool · Best of: Features

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  Even as trading and markets moved faster, Warren Buffett made patience profitable
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  and cool. Written by Josh Funk and Stan Cho. This article is
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  being read by an automated voice, generated by Everlet. Omaha, Nebraska, the
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  AP. Even in the age of algorithms, short attention spans, and TikTok
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  teases, Warren Buffett continued to profit with his patient bargain hunting approach,
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  while offering folksy advice on investing in life. As chairman and CEO
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  of Berkshire Hathaway, Buffett became famous for his unwavering and methodical investing
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  style buy good businesses when their prices are low. Stay on The
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  sidelines when prices are too high, and be patient with well chosen
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  picks. He rode that to decades of beating the rest of the
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  US stock market before he retired as Berkshire's chairman on Friday, less
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  than a year after giving up his role as CEO. The formula
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  of buying good things at low prices sounds simple, and it's the
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  foundation of a style of investing called value hunting, but it periodically
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  comes under criticism when The
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  hot new thing is enthralling Wall Street, whether it's dot com stocks
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  in the late nineteen nineties or gold when its price was setting
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  records early his year. Buffett is famously skeptical of gold as an
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  investment, saying it has two significant shortcomings, being neither of much use
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  nor procreative. The investing world has had other celebrities. JP Morgan built
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  his reputation by investing in railroads during the nineteenth century. Andrew Carnegie
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  helped build the US steel industry and became famous for his philanthropy.
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  Jim Kramer and Kevin O'Leary are on TV shows. But few ever
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  cracked into the national consciousness like Buffett, and none did so from
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  near the geographic center of the country in Omaha, Nebraska. Buffett offers
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  enduring lessons on life and investing Many professional investors also adhere to
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  Buffett's style of bargain hunting, but none have had the kind of
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  folksy humor and candor that can draw hordes of investors each year,
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  like those attending Berkshire Hathaway's annual shareholder meeting. More than forty thousand
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  people would pack in Omaha Arena on the first Saturday in May
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  to hear from Buffett and his longtime investing partner, Charlie Munger, who
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  died in twenty twenty three and espoused a similar take it slow
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  and make it right approach to investing. Besides, talking about how they
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  hunted for well run businesses and the news of the day, the
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  would also regularly confess to their own mistakes and crackwise. Not a
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  day goes by where that I've learned about Warren doesn't affect me
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  positively, both personally and financially, said Todd Finkel, a retired professor. He
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  grew up in Omaha, knows Buffett's children, and wrote the book Warren
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  Buffett Investor and Entrepreneur. When Finkel would bring students to visit the
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  Oracle of Omaha for extended Q and A meetings, Finkel said they
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  first topic Buffett would discuss was never financial. He didn't say anything
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  about money. The first topic that he would always bring up is
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  that the most important thing you'll do in your life is to
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  pick who to marry. He built a reputation
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  for honesty, and trust. Following a scandal at Salamon Brothers, in which
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  Berkshire Hathaway had an ownership stake, Buffett became chairman and testified in
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  Congress. He said all employees were told, After they first obey all
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  rules, I then want employees to ask themselves whether they are willing
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  to have any contemplated act appear the next day on the front
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  page of their local paper to be read by their spouses, children,
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  and friends, with the reporting done by an informed and critical reporter.
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  That reputation for honesty, along with his famed patience for investments, helped
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  Buffett stay famous even in his post truth era, where people scroll
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  through feeds at finger flicking speed. He's such an icon that scammers
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  would use him in AI generated videos that appeared to show him
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  endorsing questionable investments or political candidates. On Reddit's Wall Street Bets Forum,
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  traders share picks for potential get rich quick opportunities in day trading
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  stocks and options. The discussion jumps from idea to idea, but even
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  the denizens there know Buffett and his famous advice to be fearful
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  when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful. His reputation
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  is so strong and his advice so well known that some memes
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  on the forum ironically joke about doing the opposite, with a picture
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  of Buffett suggesting that everyone freak out and sell in a panic.
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  Buffett's lessons go well beyond business. Bob Miles, who has taught a
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  college course about Buffett for sixteen years, said that people might initially
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  get attracted to Buffett because he is rich and has made many
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  Berkshire shareholders wealthy. But their interest deepens after reading Buffett's annual letters,
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  which became required reading for many investors, and hearing him speak in
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  interviews. Through reading and listening, people would glean nuggets from Buffett like
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  his more rules for investing. Rule number one, never lose money. Rule
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  number two, never forget rule number one, or that you only find
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  out who is swimming naked when the
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  tide goes out, referencing how tough times will quickly show who has
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  been taking too much risk. He also suggested that who you associate
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  with is just enormously important. Don't expect that you'll make every decision
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  right on that. But you are going to have your life progress
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  in the general direction of the people you work with, that you
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  admire, that become your friends. Peoples associate him with successful investing, but
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  I look at him more and more as kind of a guide
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  toward how to live a successful life. Whatever your talents happen to
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  be, Miles said. Few investors have broad appeal like Buffett. At the
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  University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business, trips for students to Berkshire's
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  annual meetings were always a hot ticket. I don't know of any
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  time that it wasn't popular, said David Musto, a finance professor at
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  the school and faculty director of the Jacobs Master of Science in
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  Quantitative Finance. With Buffett's departure from the stage, the obvious question is
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  whether anyone else could replace him as the world's most famous value
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  investor. Musto said, some other big names still exist in the investing
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  world, such as Will Danoff at Fidelity Investments, who is retiring from
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  day to day management at the end of the year, but it's
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  difficult to find someone with as strong and as long a track
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  record as Buffett's, or the wit and personality. Musto said it's important
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  for value investing to remain a force in the market, particularly when
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  traders are jumping into meme stocks, obscure cryptocurrencies, and other bets, built
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  more on hope that their prices will go up than belief that
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  it's a good business trading at a good price. It certainly helps
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  to have people in the middle, Musto said, thinking about the value
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  of a stock.