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The year is 1942. An 11-year-old boy uses the money he has saved to buy his first stock. 3 shares at $38 each. Shortly after, the price drops to $27. The boy is terrified. When the price climbs back to $40, he sells right away. A small profit, but within a few years that stock would reach $200. The boy took 2 lessons from this.
1 - Don't get stuck on the price you paid. 2 - Impatience costs you dearly. That boy's name was Warren Buffett. And he applied those two lessons for 80 years. Today he is 95. At the end of 2025, he stepped down from running his company and left behind one of the most successful investment stories in history.
Today we'll go through his method in 7 steps. And for each step, we'll look at how to apply it in Turkey. First, let's see why we should listen to him. In 1965, Buffett took over a failing textile company called Berkshire Hathaway and turned it into an investment company. From 1965 to 2024, Berkshire's value grew by nearly 20% a year on average.
The US stock market returned around 10%. That gap may look small, but compounded over 60 years, Berkshire stock's total return came to over 5 million percent. The market's was 39,000%. And here's the surprising part: more than 95% of Buffett's current wealth came after his 65th birthday. So most of the secret wasn't intelligence, it was time.
One more detail: in 1958, Buffett bought a house for $31,500 and he still lives in that house. To invest, you first need money to invest. That's Buffett's first and most boring secret. With today's inflation, the word "saving" sounds almost like a joke. But think about it: whether you earn 30,000 or 300,000 lira a month, if you don't have the habit of setting some aside, building wealth is very hard.
The book's advice is simple. Put 10% of your income somewhere separate that you can't reach. But this doesn't mean keeping cash, lira or dollars, under your mattress. Unless he has to, Buffett doesn't like holding cash. The goal is to stockpile ammunition for investing. If 10% feels hard, start small.
For example, set aside 50 lira in week one. 100 in week two, 150 in week three, adding 50 lira every week. By year's end, you'll have saved 68,900 lira. And you won't feel like you're making any big sacrifice along the way. Most importantly, don't leave it to willpower. Set up an automatic transfer that runs on payday.
Willpower runs out by the end of the month, but an automatic transfer doesn't. The source text contains this sentence: "Most lottery winners end up back where they started." And online, a figure circulates claiming 70% of lottery winners go broke within 5 years. But of course, there's no solid source for it.
So what does the research say? Lup's first note. In 2011, American economists studied Florida lottery winners who won between $50,000 and $150,000. These people went bankrupt less often in the first 2 years. But 3 to 5 years later, their bankruptcy rates were almost the same as small-prize winners'.
So a mid-sized prize didn't solve their problems. It only postponed them. But in Sweden, large studies of much bigger prizes showed a different picture. Most winners spent the money gradually over the years and preserved their wealth for a long time. So the myth that everyone who wins the lottery goes broke doesn't really hold.
But there is a real lesson in it. It's not the size of the money you have, it's your habit of managing it that matters. For someone without the habit, new money only makes the road a little longer. Imagine this for a moment. Someone offers to sell you $1 for 50 cents. How many would you buy? The answer is simple.
As many as possible. In real life, that rarely happens. But a good investment is surprisingly similar to it. Buffett's method rests on two questions. What is this company really worth, and is today's price below that value? Buffett learned this from his teacher, Benjamin Graham. In his book The Intelligent Investor, Graham created a character: Mr.
Market. Every day, Mr. Market knocks on your door and quotes you a price for your shares. Some days he's euphoric and offers you a crazy price. Other days he's gloomy and wants to buy your shares for next to nothing. But the company itself hasn't changed at all between those two days. Graham's advice is this: Don't follow Mr.
Market's mood. Use him as an opportunity. Sell to him when he's euphoric, buy from him when he's gloomy. And never forget that you don't have to accept any of his offers. That's also where Buffett's famous line comes from: Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful. But there are thousands of companies in the world.
Where do you start? Buffett's answer: where you understand. He calls it the circle of competence. Companies whose business, how they make money, and where they'll be in 5-10 years you're able to predict. Ask yourself 3 questions. What do I love doing? What am I good at? Where do I spend my money? Where these 3 questions overlap is your circle.
This will make you miss some opportunities. In 1999, Buffett stayed out of internet companies. A financial magazine ran a cover asking "What's wrong, Warren?" They said he'd gotten old and missed out on the world. A few months later, the internet bubble burst. The money Buffett didn't lose was worth far more than what everyone else lost.
You've found a good company inside your circle. But can this company stand the test of time? Buffett calls this an economic moat. Like the water-filled moat around a castle. The thing that protects a company from rivals. Sometimes the moat is a brand. People say, "I'll grab a cola." The brand name has replaced the product itself.
Sometimes it's pricing power. In 1972, Buffett bought a candy company called See's for $25 million. Every year the company raised its prices a little. Customers kept buying anyway. By 2007, it had earned Berkshire $1.35 billion in pre-tax profit. But a moat doesn't last forever. In the early 2000s, the world's largest phone maker was Nokia.
In 2007, touchscreen smartphones arrived. Within a few years, Nokia's castle collapsed. So ask this as well: Can this company survive the next innovation? Buffett's 5th secret. Where most people give up. Reading financial statements. But don't worry, it's just a few basics. Let's imagine a fictional company: Kemal's Turkish Delight Factory.
There are 3 statements to look at. 1 - The balance sheet. What does the company own? How much does it owe? What's left after subtracting liabilities from assets is equity. Kemal's equity is 1.3 million lira. His debt is 500,000 lira. So the debt-to-equity ratio is about 38%. That's a reasonable ratio.
Companies whose debt exceeds their equity are much more fragile. 2 - The income statement. How much profit does the company make? Here Buffett's favorite measure is return on equity. Last year, Kemal's equity was 1 million lira. This year he made a net profit of 520,000 lira. So every 100 lira he put in earned him 52 lira.
The book considers anything above 15% good. But this is Turkey, and there's a small trap here. With inflation at 30%, a company's profit in lira inflates on its own. So you need to strip out inflation. Adjusted for inflation, Kemal's 52% drops to about 17%. Still good, but not as shiny as 52%. In Turkey, a 15% return is actually below inflation, so it really means losing value.
3 - Cash flow. Is money actually coming into the company's coffers? Profit can look good on paper, but cash doesn't lie. You want to see consistent, positive cash flow over the years. You can access all of these statements for Turkish companies on KAP, the Public Disclosure Platform, for free. A note: since 2023, companies have been using inflation accounting.
Keep this in mind when comparing figures across years. You've found a good company, but a good company isn't a good investment at any price. If you buy a 1-million car for 2 million, no matter how good the car is, you've made a bad deal. Graham's most important idea: margin of safety. If a bridge can carry 10 tons, you don't drive a 10-ton truck over it.
You drive a 6-ton one. Because you may have made a mistake in your math. Graham also used the most extreme version of this: The net-net method. Let's go back to Kemal's factory. Assets that can turn into cash within a year, current assets, are 700,000 lira. All his debts are 650,000. So even without counting the factory, the machines or the brand, 50,000 lira is left over.
If the company has 20,000 shares, that's 2.5 lira per share. Graham wanted to find such a company at below two-thirds of that value. In other words, below 1.67 lira per share. That way, even if you were wrong, your loss would be limited. But let's be honest. Such cheap companies are very rare today, and they usually have a problem.
Over the years, under the influence of his partner Charlie Munger, Buffett changed his mind. In 1989 he wrote: It's far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price. The last secret: manage your portfolio wisely. First, accept a simple truth. Nobody is right all the time.
Buffett included, and a mistake costs more than you think. If you lose 50% of your money, to get back where you were you need to gain not 50%, but 100%. That's why the book suggests a few rules. 1 - Don't put more than 10% of your portfolio into a single stock. Buffett's famous line: Diversification is protection against ignorance.
But careful: in the same breath, Buffett adds that for those who really know what they're doing, it makes little sense. He himself once put nearly half his portfolio into Apple. If you're not Buffett, the 10% rule protects you. 2. Rank the companies you trust. Give the biggest share to the one you trust most.
3. Read your companies' reports at least once a year. If something goes wrong, adjust. 4. Be patient and, if needed, stay out of the game. In 1969, Buffett felt everything was too expensive and closed his investment partnership. A few years later, the market crashed in 1973-74. And in 1974, Buffett told a magazine: Now is the time to start investing.
5 - Don't sell just because the price fell. Think of your investment as an employee. Would you fire a good employee just because they had a bad week? Buffett doesn't sell when a strong company's price drops. He buys more. All 7 of these secrets are great. But here's the most interesting part. Lup's second note.
In 2007, Buffett made a bet. He said that over the next 10 years, an ordinary US stock index fund would beat any basket of funds picked by the world's best professional investors. The bet: $1 million. It would go to a charity chosen by the winner. An investment firm took the bet and picked 5 different hedge fund baskets.
In other words, the world's most expensive, smartest money managers. The result after 10 years: The index fund returned about 126%. The hedge funds averaged only 36%. Buffett won the bet comfortably. And here's the most striking part. In his 2013 letter, Buffett revealed the instructions he left for the money his wife will inherit after his death: 90% in a low-cost stock index fund, 10% in short-term government bonds.
So the world's most successful stock picker told his own family not to pick stocks. What this means is: Buffett's patience, his habits, his calm toward Mr. Market, anyone can learn. But picking individual companies like him isn't realistic for most of us. Buffett himself says so. So let's wrap things up.
Buffett's 7 secrets. Build the habit first, buy below value, stay where you understand, pick companies with a moat, read the statements, leave a margin of safety and manage patiently. But underneath all of this lies a single thing. Time. The stock he sold out of impatience at age 11 taught him a lesson for life.
And almost all of his wealth came after he turned 65. One of my favorite Buffett quotes goes like this: Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago. I have a question for you. What's inside your circle of competence? Which business do you truly understand? Write it in the comments, share it with me. See you in the next video. Take care of yourself. And your money.
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