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Jan 1, 2023Liked by Philo

How do you explain the money managers still on the list? 2&20 is steep, but I assume you still need great returns over an extended period to make the Forbes list from it.

One strange thing about Buffett, is that he didn’t charge a % of the incredible alpha he was producing for his investors. Maybe that is what’s really rare: most investors with alpha will charge for it.

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Oct 6, 2021Liked by Philo

Fascinating and insightful, thank you. I think Buffett himself would take issue with your definition of him as a completely passive investor, and would also point out that a number of his early investments were private companies. What's so interesting about the history of Berkshire Hathaway is how Buffett created such a hybrid business model: part investment partnership, part insurance company, part private equity buyout firm, part industrial conglomerate. It's hard to dispute that he was a passive investor in most of his investments, but there are many where he and his partners played outsized roles at board level and were even highly active in the day-to-day running of the underlying businesses.

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this misses the biggest reason for buffets outsized performance which is his cost-free float being used as essentially 1.7X leverage. if you take that away his performance is not super significant in terms of alpha post Geico acquisition .

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