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well I remember when you had a textile mill and it can I forget it the textiles aren't really just congealed electricity the way modern technology works and the TVA rates were 60 percent lower than the rates in New England it was an absolutely hopeless hand and you had the sense to hold it 25 years later well you didn't pour more money into it no that's right and no I recognizing reality when it's really awful and taking appropriate action is just involves often just the most Elementary good sense not only how can you run a textile mill in New England when your competitors are paying way lower power rates I'll tell you another problem with it too I mean the fellow that I put in to run it was a really good guy I mean he was a hundred percent honest with me in every way it was it was a decent human being any new textiles and uh they've been a jerk it would have been a lot easier uh I would have probably thought differently about it but uh we just stumbled along for a while and then you know we got lucky that we've got Greenwell decided his own insurance company and we did this and that but I even bought a second textile company in New Hampshire I mean I don't know how many seven or eight years later I mean to talk something about dumb decision maybe maybe after lunch we'll do it a little and uh it it is incredible how many dumb decisions we made Charlie and I bought that and Sandy gottisman we bought that department store and that was 1966 and we were working with our own money and why in the world did we think and Charlie flew to Baltimore and I mean we used to really work in those days and and there again we had wonderful people couldn't have been a better guy but everybody in that business had a different reference point no they wanted to expand their company well who can blame them for that and you know they were planning the couple of new stores and each department the shoe department said well we'll do it better at this time and all that kind of thing but the whole idea was crazy and and uh we got there for a little while and we figured it out finally and uh we reverse course but why the hell did we do in the first place well because we were stupid yeah okay well that's important to realize we paid six dollars a share for that stock and uh uh if the department store has succeeded it might be worth you know thirty dollars a share now and we do and it failed so but we but we did other things and we merged it into Berkshire and we'll talk about that a little later uh and you know I don't know whether it's 150 000 a year an hour or something like that from the six bucks so if it succeeded we would have made it we would maybe made a few dollars and because it failed we made hundreds of thousands of dollars per share but that's the way life is you just keep going and keep learning that's the Deep learning keep learning keep learning and you can say why would it take guys that long to learn and uh well we got a few minutes before lunch we should let's address that problem because I did bring something along on that it there have been well I started buying stocks when I was 11.
I've been reading every book in the library on it I loved it my dad you know his business and I get the good honors office and read the books down there and they save the money and finally by the time I was 11 I could buy a stock and I could tell you at that time uh I want the nerd Stock Exchange when I was nine my dad took us to New York each kid in New York once uh and he took me I went to New York Stock Exchange and I was in awe of it I could tell you how the specialist system works and the Odd Lot arrangements and I can tell you history of finance and all of these things and then I then I started I got very interested in technical analysis and charted stocks and then all kinds of crazy things hours and hours and hours and and uh and save money to buy other stocks and tried shorting and and I just did everything and then when I was either 19 or 20 and I can't remember exactly where I did it or something uh I picked up a book someplace wasn't a textbook at school but it was in Lincoln Nebraska and I you know I looked at this book and I saw one paragraph and it told me I'd been doing everything wrong I just had the whole approach wrong I thought I was in the business of trying to pick stocks that would go up and in one paragraph I I saw that that was totally foolish and I left I brought something that it's really interesting let's put up let's put up uh what do we call this chart we oh here we are yeah yeah let's put up illusion illusion one done yeah there we have it you know now if you look at that some people will see two faces some people will say a base and something people will look a long time and only see two faces there but the Mind flips from one side to another and that's another sign some name for it that uh they call it ambiguous Illusions or something of the sort uh there's other things that talk about aha moments or or in the old comic strips with Popeye Wimpy would have a little balloon over his head and a light bulb would go on there's this point where all of a sudden you see something you haven't seen well it took me I had an illusion that I was looking at we'll say in that one two phases go to the let's go to the uh one labeled two and if you're if you're looking at it from one side you look it looks like it a rabbit and if you look the other way it looks like you're looking at a duck and you know the mind is a very funny place add I think people call it an app receptive Mass when you have all kinds of things going on in your mind and they've gone for years and they sit there and get lost and then all of a sudden you see something different than what you were seeing before Donna took me in stocks which I was intensely interested in I had a decent IQ and I was reading and thinking and you know and and it was important to me to make some money on it everything either every every motivation in the world and then I read a chapter I read a paragraph actually in chapter eight I think it was of the intelligent investor and it just it told me that I wasn't looking at the doc I was looking you know now it was the rabbit whatever it may be and whether you call it a light bulb what do you call it you know a moment of truth whatever it may be and that's happened that happened to me in Lincoln I made it changed my life if I hadn't read that book I don't know how long I would have gone on looking for Head and Shoulders formations and 200-day moving averages and the Odd Lot ratios and a zillion things and I love that kind of stuff except it wasn't it was the wrong stuff I was looking at it and I've had that happen and Charlie's out of that I'm sure it happens a few times in your life and all of a sudden you see something important the why in the hell didn't I say this in the first place maybe it's a week ago maybe it's a year ago maybe it's five years ago maybe it's maybe it's learning how to get along with people you know I mean whether actually it's it's better to be yeah kind or not you know or whether I mean they're just learning how to have we want the world to love you what you have to do or whether it's it's you know what when you see it but she doesn't see it for 10 years before and I don't know whether Charlie's got some thoughts on that or not but that's happened in a few situations in business where I've looked at a company for for a decade and and then there's something that just all gets rearranged in your mind in you you know you can say well why didn't I see this five years ago or no but usually I've had it happen a few times obviously and and everybody here has and just in different areas of their lives and you think how could I have been so stupid well that's what Charlie's when he was in the law practice uh he had a partner well he told him every smart guy that would get in trouble usually with it was guys and usually it was women and the and and uh you know they'd come into the office and they'd look you know down faced and everything and it's a it seemed like a good idea at the time you know I mean and and their lives unraveled you know in many games uh so there's there is that perceptive Mass that's sitting in there inside somehow and every now and then it produces some insight it's better actually if it produces insight into your behavior then whether it produces insight to make money I mean that and some people never get it and they wonder why they're you know whether their kids hate them or whether there's no way in the world that would give a damn whether they live or die in fact they prefer they die because then they've been courting them for their art collection or whatever it may be it it's it's just Charlie would say you know just write your obituary and reverse engineer it and uh not a not a crazy idea but Charlie I don't know what do you know about that perceptive masses which electrical Illusions well I know that that's the way the brand works and it's easy to get it wrong and part of the trick is to get so you correct your own mistakes and we've done a lot of that yeah frequency way too late yeah we've done better with the mistakes than we have with the good reasonably good ideas well it's so easy to overdo a good idea that's what's going on now you have a lot of good ideas that are being grossly overdone
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