2007 Berkshire Hathaway Shareholder Meeting

One young man stood up and announced that he was seventeen years old and this was his tenth shareholder meeting. He asked Mr. Buffett and Mr. Munger what they recommended for someone who was young and wanted to become a successful investor. Warren responded that the best advice he could give is simply to read everything you can about investing. By the time he was ten, he had read every book on the topic in the Omaha public library, in some cases, twice. It’s important that you have a broad base upon which to draw because only then will you be able to distinguish between what is good and truly valuable from that which is not helpful. The changing force in his life was reading Benjamin Graham’s Intelligent Investor when he was nineteen years old as it provided the framework that he still uses today. The central concepts of the book are margin of safety and thinking of stocks as businesses rather than pieces of paper that fluctuate in value.

Other than that, Buffett said it was important to then jump into the water. Investing on paper, he said, is like holding hands whereas actually investing real capital is like something else entirely (a response that was much to the amusement of the audience.)