Buffett

Since the man’s name came up, I’ll share an anecdote with you that I once shared with Saul.

I used to be best friends with Warren’s son, Peter. In about 1992, I quit my job at an ad agency and was taking with me a $25,000 SEP IRA that I had to invest. I had zero experience in investing and begged Peter to ask his dad for advice. Peter HATED asking his dad financial questions (Warren legendarily isn’t leaving his kids much), but he made an exception for me.

A few weeks later, Peter said “My dad got back to me.” I was excited. “Oh yeah? What did he say?”

Here I was on the cusp of the greatest bull market his history, with the word of the greatest investor of our time. And this was his advice…

“T-Bills.”

Why couldn’t he say Berkshire or Coke or ANYThing? Why T-Bills?

“He doesn’t think you should invest money you can’t lose.”

Fortunately, I didn’t listen to him because I put my money in some funds and over the three decades, it grew into a nice retirement account that can withstand a 50% haircut over four short months. I’m not happy about it, indeed I’m sweating it, but I’m not going to starve.

Hopefully, none of us on this board have invested money they can’t lose, where you are forced to sell stock in these great companies we follow to pay for food or shelter. The market will come back around. Hopefully sooner rather than later.

To quote another great investor, Ben Graham: “in the short run, the market is like a voting machine–tallying up which firms are popular and unpopular. But in the long run, the market is like a weighing machine–assessing the substance of a company.”

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