Inside the Investments of Warren Buffett: Twenty Cases (Columbia Business School Publishing)
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Since the 1950s, Warren Buffett and his partners have backed some of the twentieth century’s most profitable, trendsetting companies. But how did they know they were making the right investments? What did Buffet and his partners look for in an up-and-coming company, and how can others replicate their approach?
A gift to Buffett followers who have long sought a pattern to the investor’s success, Inside the Investments of Warren Buffett presents the most detailed analysis to date of Buffet’s long-term investment portfolio. Yefei Lu, an experienced investor, starts with Buffett’s interest in the Sanborn Map Company in 1958 and tracks nineteen more of his major investments in companies like See’s Candies, the Washington Post, GEICO, Coca-Cola, US Air, Wells Fargo, and IBM. Accessing partnership letters, company documents, annual reports, third-party references, and other original sources, Lu pinpoints what is unique about Buffett’s timing, instinct, use of outside knowledge, and postinvestment actions, and he identifies what could work well for all investors in companies big and small, domestic and global. His substantial chronology accounts for broader world events and fluctuations in the U.S. stock market, suggesting Buffett’s most important trait may be the breadth of his expertise.
Warren Buffett has talked extensively about his investment philosophy but unfortunately less so on actual investments. By digging up long forgotten annual reports and sharing his own thoughtful insights, Yefei Lu does an excellent job of filling in the missing pieces of the puzzle in understanding how Buffett invests.
(Robert Vinall, CEO, RV Capital)
In the crowded market for books about Warren Buffett, portfolio manager Yefei Lu has written a uniquely valuable, information-packed volume. This instant classic analyzes twenty of Buffett’s most notable investments, starting in 1958 and continuing through to today. A must read!
(John Mihaljevic, publisher, The Manual of Ideas)
Inside the Investments of Warren Buffett: Twenty Cases (Columbia Business School Publishing)
A simple and useful analysis of Warren Buffett’s twenty key investments over the course of his fifty-plus-years career. Lu has done a great job in illustrating the key factors that Buffett paid attention to in assessing the risk-reward profile of each investment. There are many lessons to be learned in this book for anyone interested in long-term investing.
(John Elkann, Chairman and CEO, Exor S.p.A.)
Yefei Lu does us all a great favor in making it so easy to follow him as he looks back at the key investments Buffett made throughout his career. Lu provides his own analysis of what Buffett would have seen, and invites us to sit in Buffett’s shoes ourselves by providing as much primary source information as possible?a monumental research effort by any measure. One even has the feeling of reaching certain critical investment insights, right alongside Buffett, that greatly influenced his development as an investor.
(Joel Cohen, MIT Investment Management Company)
For serious investors and analysts eager to transcend the cult of personality around Buffett and discern what actually makes him great, this study comes highly recommended.
(Publishers Weekly)
Recommended for any investor or student seeking financial expertise.
(Library Journal)
[Inside the Investments of Warren Buffett] provide[s] great insights into deep value investing.
(Seeking Alpha)
By examining twenty of Warren Buffett’s investments over a fifty-year period from 1960 through 2011, Yefei Lu discusses Buffett’s likely analysis of each one and the lessons to be learned from them. Inside the Investments of Warren Buffett should appeal to value investors and those wanting to benefit from Buffett’s investment experience.
(M. Ali Khan, Abram Hutzler Professor of Political Economy, Johns Hopkins University)
About the Author
Yefei Lu is a portfolio manager at Shareholder Value Management AG, a value-investment company based in Frankfurt, Germany. Previously, he worked for a single-family investment office in Munich and for McKinsey & Company in Berlin. He holds an MBA from the London Business School and a Bachelor of Science in Economics from Stanford University.
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