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I'm Dudley Schroeder from Council Bluffs, Iowa. What...When you were younger, what first sparked your interest in investing, and what advice would you give a young person if they wanted to invest in the stock market? Thank you . Well, I...I'm not exactly...I got interested, I guess, when I was seven or so.
I was wasting my time before this. It's, uh... It's a bit like W. K. Fields, when he inherited money, someone asked him what he did with it, and he said he spent half on whiskey and squandered the rest. Uh... So, I was there... hanging around. Uh, but I ... my father was in this business, so I would go to his office, see these interesting books, read them, and go there.
It was on the fourth floor of what is now known as the Omaha Building at 17th and Farnham, and on the second floor was Harris, Upham and Company. They had a board, uh, and I went there. Uh , in those days the market was open on Saturdays, for 2 hours, so I could go on a Saturday, and I would see all these interesting things that would appear on the feed, and I would just read a lot.
I probably took every book in the Omaha Public Library, every book they had about investing or the stock market, basically. I was very interested in the New York Stock Exchange. I thought I might want to be a specialist when I grew up, and maybe I still will. Uh, but they...uh...I took all the books.
I read them. And finally, when I was 11, I bought three stocks, and I didn't know...I was fascinated by this topic. My father was elected to Congress, so now the library is even bigger. Uh, and I took all the books I could from there about the markets, and I used charts and all that stuff. And then finally I read Graham's book while I was at the University of Nebraska, "The Intelligent Investor," when I was 19, and it completely changed my worldview.
But the advice I would give is to read everything you can get your hands on. Yes, and uh, and starting very young. It's a huge advantage, uh, in almost any field— to start young, and if that's what you're interested in, uh, and you start young and you read a lot, you'll be fine. I mean, there are no secrets in this case that only a narrow circle of people know .
I mean, you know, we don't go to temples and study tables that are only available to those who have passed previous tests or anything like that. All of this is publicly available, in black and white. It's a simple matter. It requires character qualities much more than intellectual abilities. That is, if you have an IQ over 125, you can discard the remaining points, give them to other family members, or do something else, because you won't need them for investing.
But you need a certain character that will allow you to think for yourself, and you will have to develop a system, and I developed mine by reading Ben Graham. I didn't invent it myself. Very simple system. And then, as you go through life, you have to look for opportunities that fit into that system, and you can't act every day.
You know, you can study every day, but you can't act every day. And I'm not ... I'm talking about reading Anheuser-Busch's annual reports for 25 years, but I read Coca-Cola, Gillette and many other companies long before we invested in them. And if you like this game, you'll find it's like playing bridge , baseball, or anything else.
And if you don't like it, you probably won't succeed in it . But I would advise you to start as early as possible and read everything you can get your hands on. Look for a successful system that has already benefited others, and in my opinion, nothing compares to Graham's approach. You will have a lot of fun and probably make a lot of money.
Charlie? Well, I'm at a bit of a disadvantage here . Warren has been a sort of investment guru since he was a boy, and he has more respect for the process than I do. I have a bit of a Kansas attitude that money management is a somewhat lowly profession compared to being a surgeon or many other jobs.
I think corporate managers should study investing better because they would become better managers. And I believe that anyone who contemplates the investment process learns more about how the world really works. And I think that's very valuable knowledge, but I don't like that such a large percentage of GDP is now going to money management and related expenses.
I don't like what percentage of the country's intellectual potential is now concentrated in all these forms of high-paying wealth management . I don't think this is good for the country. And I hate the fact that we brought this on ourselves because of our own preferences. Charlie is sitting here next to me just as part of his public relations program, actually.
Please do not take pictures that could be used to blackmail them through association with me. Charlie made a very valid point that managers would work better if they understood investments. I find this extremely fascinating, and I have seen it throughout my life. I saw it up close. I have friends who are CEOs of companies , and they trust the management of their money to others.
If you ask them, "Should you buy Coca-Cola, Gillette, or something like that?" They'll say, "This is too complicated. I don't know anything about this kind of stuff. What do I know about investing?" And then the next day an investment banker comes along with the idea of buying the company for $3 billion, which is essentially buying a large number of shares in one firm; They give a short 2-hour presentation, hand it over to the strategic planning group, and believe they should be the ones making the decision to buy a multi-billion dollar business, even though they don't consider themselves qualified to make even $10,000 of their own money.
It's just extraordinary what we're seeing in corporate America with regard to takeover activity. It's, you know, a bit like the saying about sausage making or laws: it's better not to look at it. Charlie, do you have any other thoughts on this ? We...You've seen a lot of this with me. Well, I really think that the current era has no parallel in the past history of capitalism.
I think we have a higher percentage of our intellectual class' attention focused on buying small shares, trying to get rich off of it, and on advertising activities with huge commissions for profit sharing. I can't recall any past era that had a similar concentration of such activity. What about you, Warren?
No, but I think you would also say that when we saw these " light versions" of this, something happened later that... Oh, yeah. If you want to talk about what the implications are for the future? A lot of what I see now reminds me a little of Sodom and Gomorrah. And, by the way, we weren't there. I mean...
No, but... But this... this is a published story. And, I think, when so many pathetic things happen that feed themselves into a vortex of envy and imitation. This, uh, has happened in the past and led to bad consequences.
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