If you are looking for some ground-breaking Buffett investment revelation in this book, you'll be disappointed. But if you follow Warren Buffett, then you know that very little of his investment philosophy is truly ground-breaking, but that's the point. It's simple, but difficult to apply.

What you will find in this book is what I have found to be difficult to find elsewhere. This book essentially combines the qualitative investment philosophy that Warren talks about a great deal about publicly with the quantitive aspects he rarely talks about directly. And it does a pretty good job of combining these two worlds.

The discussion of Warren's qualitative approach is nothing new if you've heard any of Warren's talks or if you've read any of his shareholder letters. I think some of the phrases might have been lifted straight from the letters.

As I expected before I read this book, Warren's technical approach is just as simple as his qualitative approach. The “unexplained techniques" are essentially math functions that you would pick up in a finance class. Let me be clear, that's not a bad thing. It's almost reassuring to find that Warren is as consistent with his technical strategy as he is with his qualitative strategy.

One downside of this book is having been published in 2000, some of the case studies featured in this book turned out to be pretty bad businesses. For example, the author features Freddie Mac, which Warren was an investor, but this book was written before he sold his stock and got out of the business before the housing crash. Also, the author suggests Bear Stearns as a possible "Warren investment company." Hindsight is always 20/20.

The book is simple and easy to read, even if you dont have any experience in the stock market, the concepts are well explained and so easy to understand.

A couple of years ago, I read the first couple of chapters of the Intelligent Investor, and when I heard about this from a friend I was hesitant as I was afraid this would be too technical also. But that wasn't the case. I really liked how the ideas are explained simply and there are also pragmatic approaches to find the right businesses to invest in (note that the book talks about investing in a business and not a stock).

I highly recommend it.

Excellent insights on Warren Buffett by his ex daughter-in-law

Though this may not contain all the secrets of Warren's investment strategy,but it would be foolish to assume any one book would.That said, if you want to lean about value investing this is a good book to start with. The overall message is quite simple and seems very obvious, but I am pretty sure it is not that easy to implement. There are only two questions you need to answer, what to buy, and when to buy and the book provides one strategy to answer that. Does it work? not sure, ask me after 10 years.

A beginners guide to value investing
21 April 2014

tI just clicked on Mary Buffett's name on Goodreads and discovered that she is actually the author of quite a large number of books, and each of those books has the name 'Warren Buffett' somewhere in the title (though in reality there are only four books). To be honest with you I am not really sure who Mary Buffett is because she is not one of Warren's children, nor is she his ex-wife (who is dead, by the way) but from what I can remember when I read this book she is connected to him somehow (if not simply using his name to make it appear that she is connected with the self-made billionaire so as to sell more books).

tWhat this book does is that it explores Warren Buffett's strategy of investing in companies that are undervalued, a term known as value investing, at a point in time when the company is going 'cheap': when the value of the shares in the company are significantly less than the actual value of the company. The problem is trying to work out whether a company is undervalued or not, and also having the spare capital to invest. Warren's strategy has worked for him, which is why he is now a billionaire, however we must remember that there was also a lot of luck and guess work on his side.

tThe issue that I had with this book was, well, first of all it suggested that I wanted to be a billionaire, which, well, I don't because, well, I really do not think that having lots of money is really going to make my life any better (though having money would be a benefit because it means that I could quit my job and then go back to university and self-fund my way through it, which at this stage I cannot). The other issue that I have with the book was the calculations that were being put forward, and these were using a term call 'future value' which is a vague figure at some point in the future which only comes about through predictions and speculations. My biggest issue with the market is that it tries to make concrete some future point that may not come about, yet people will hold onto those suppositions as if they were true.

tThere are a lot of theories that abound as to how the market works, and my theory is basically that it doesn't. In fact my theory is that the stock market is nothing more than a mathematical illusion that exists simply because we want to believe that it exists and is efficient because we want to believe that it is efficient. In fact, the whole basis of the market is that it exists on confidence, and if nobody had any confidence in the market then the whole system would collapse. In fact this has come about numerous times, and they usually end up with names like Black Friday, Black Tuesday, well, actually any day with the world black in front of it. The sad thing is that when a market (or even a particular stock) crashes in that way it is usually us poor sods that are left standing around holding our dicks in our hands as the wealthy elite run off with all of our money, and all that we are left with are a bunch of worthless pieces of paper.

tThat is all a share is, and in a way it is no longer even that, and that is a piece of paper that represents ownership in a company, (and also the right to vote at an annual general meeting). In the end if that company collapses in a heap of debt, then in that piece of paper (or the representation of that piece of paper) is absolutely worthless. However, the problem is that we need to prepare and we need to use our resources wisely, which means investing it in as many ways as possible, whether it be through a superfund, or directly as I tend to do it (because getting money out of a superfund, even when you are entitled to it, can be nigh impossible – just ask the guy that sits next to me at work).

Nothing new, if you've already consumed most of the literature on Buffett.

Es un libro que inicialmente me pareció interesante, después se convirtió en el típico libro de autoayuda financiera, por el estilo de “padre rico padre pobre”, o “piense y hágase rico”, en donde supuestamente se revelan los secretos para generar riqueza, el libro exhibe unos escenarios fantásticos, tendencias de súper compañías con comportamientos lineales y unos ejemplos que realmente se salen de la realidad.

Somewhat dated but useful nevertheless. The audio-book version spoken by Mary Buffett is clear, well paced and articulated.

Good book, if someone want to know what is investigating and the wonder of compounding this will kick start their idea.

Not a bad layman's introduction to security analysis

The information was severely outdated and the author was extremely redundant. She also presented it as “leaking secrets now that she’s divorced from Warren’s son”. I honestly didn’t learn anything new about investing that I didn’t already know. I’d pass and go for a more current book if I could go back. I gave a generous 3 stars because I enjoyed hearing the stories of Warren when he was younger.