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Warren Buffett steps down as Berkshire Hathaway CEO after six decades

latimes.com

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Re: Warren Buffett steps down as Berkshire Hathaway CEO after six decades

#491

Post by Ghos3t »

lazide wrote: post #484
rTX5CMRXIfFG wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's OK to have someone to look up to and have an example to follow, but why do you need to have an idol?

It depends on how much you believe other people’s stated public persona. If you believe it, then it helps model other areas of life in a way that undoubtably supports the outcome. For example, not part of Mr Buffets persona (and I believe it!) is staying up until 2am getting wasted and having 5 baby mommas. And so anyone trying to have even a shadow of Mr. buffets success should probably also avoid doing so, and perh…

Yes of course there's only one way to have a succefull life and one should just follow what others before them have already done, in order to be successful, who needs to think for themselves and make choices, just read the financial papers make a lot of money and then when you are dead and forgotten by the world at least you will have all your money to comfort you in the afterlife

Re: Warren Buffett steps down as Berkshire Hathaway CEO after six decades

#492

Post by jacquesm »

SecretDreams wrote: post #481
jacquesm wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elon and Buffet are polar opposites.

But can you infer this from their Wikipedias?

Why do I need to go to a website when I'm fairly well informed about the lives of both?

Re: Warren Buffett steps down as Berkshire Hathaway CEO after six decades

#493

Post by yuuu »

RickyLahey wrote: post #475
walthamstow wrote: post #10

Driving 7 minutes to work and stopping at a drive-thru to pick up McDonalds breakfast every day. The man is a true American hero.

damn you guys are gullible

noooooooo he’s the billionaire with a heart of gold nooooooooo he’s just a sweet old man who likes mcdonald’s!!!!

Re: Warren Buffett steps down as Berkshire Hathaway CEO after six decades

#494

Post by lazide »

Ghos3t wrote: post #491
lazide wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on how much you believe other people’s stated public persona. If you believe it, then it helps model other areas of life in a way that undoubtably supports the outcome. For example, not part of Mr Buffets persona (and I believe it!) is staying up until 2am getting wasted and having 5 baby mommas. And so anyone trying to have even a shadow of Mr. buffets success should probably also avoid doing so, and perh…

Yes of course there's only one way to have a succefull life and one should just follow what others before them have already done, in order to be successful, who needs to think for themselves and make choices, just read the financial papers make a lot of money and then when you are dead and forgotten by the world at least you will have all your money to comfort you in the afterlife

Notably, Mr. Buffet didn't do that (per-se). But he certainly copied a bunch of habits which apparently worked for him. Or not. Who knows.

You can't get much beyond the median if you copy other people, unless you're really lucky. But if you handicap yourself constantly too, good luck even hitting the median.

Re: Warren Buffett steps down as Berkshire Hathaway CEO after six decades

#495

Post by skybrian »

mvkel wrote: post #293

Berkshire's investment in Apple is responsible for ~50% of its portfolio success in the last 20 years. The rest is insurance. Respect to the man for running an operation for 60 years. That's a helluva feat that deserves a lot of admiration. Still surprised at HN's glazing of someone whose life's mission was to make a number go up and to the right via insurance packages.

Also bought $4.3 billion of Google in November. That’s tiny compared to what their Apple investment was, but their days of ignoring tech stocks seem to be over.

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/14/warren-buffetts-berkshire-ha...

Re: Warren Buffett steps down as Berkshire Hathaway CEO after six decades

#496

Post by Yokohiii »

gpt5 wrote: post #476
Yokohiii wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think moralism is an side effect of the demise of spiritualism in the west. We somehow have to shape moral values, the lack of a framework for it makes it feel blunt and chaotic. That being said, I find it odd to moralize on moralism. We have way too many people in power that are awful humans and do a bad job and never get punished. Meanwhile, stealing a car because you are hungry can be the begin of a ruined life.…

The point is that moralism makes everyone blind and see in black and white. Instead of seeing the nuance, you’d see everything that comes out of Elon Musk or Israel whoever you’ve managed to convince yourself is that current villain, as bad - without attention to details. More than that - you’d waste your time arguing whether they are “good” or “bad”, instead of focusing on specific actions, which is what society as…

I have a huge problem with your use of "moralism" as a term. For me it appears to be used pejoratively as an act to weaken the concept of morals at large. (Which isn't your invention but something you probably picked up.)

We made a machine that is driven by emotions and rewards short and exaggerated interactions. On the surface it's black and white, but in each such situations there is also nuanced discussions and people that reflect things. I often also carry such moral debates to friends, I assume others do as well. There is at least a portion of nuance. Saying it's always black and white, is black and white thinking itself.

What I would agree with is that groupthink is a problem. People choose sides depending on who or which group said it. Also virtue signalling, as it's often just (unconscious) reputation management and hinders progress.

Re: Warren Buffett steps down as Berkshire Hathaway CEO after six decades

#497

Post by elcritch »

nl wrote: post #455
toomanyrichies wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Plenty of people are happier with nicer things. Are they truly happier, in the sense of being more content? Or are they just deriving more temporary pleasure from the hedonic treadmill they're on? You can probably tell which one it is, by how long their happiness with their house / car / TV / fill-in-the-blank lasts, before they start thinking about trading up to an even nicer fill-in-the-blank. Buddhist monk Matth…

I really don't like this moralizing but more importantly there's increasing evidence that wealth does correlate with life satisfaction. > The data showed the happiness gap between wealthy and middle-income participants was wider than between middle- and low-income participants. And the apparent reason: > He said: “A greater feeling of control over life can explain about 75% of the association between money and happin…

Sure, but I’d argue that it’s largely reduced stress rather than raw materialism. For example being able not to worry about paying both the electric bill and a child’s dental work this month.

There’s many other research that corroborates this view. After some point increasing income didn’t increase life satisfaction. Usually somewhere in the low upper-middle class region.

Re: Warren Buffett steps down as Berkshire Hathaway CEO after six decades

#498

Post by rhplus »

esseph wrote: post #367
WaxProlix wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's insanely humble by billionaire standards. Any FAANG SWE over 30 or so in the United States can get that. Contrast with multiple compounds, entire islands, etc.

> Any FAANG SWE That is so few people. So, so, few people. Rough lookup says less than 150,000 people in the US, or 0.044% of the US population.

Zillow estimates that home as $1.5 million.

That’s not far off the current median home sales price in San Francisco and easily the median home price in many, many upper middle class neighborhoods across the country.

How many households in the US can afford a $1.5m home? Assuming they need $400k then we can see that that’s a 95th percentile household income in the US, which translates to about 6 million of the US’s total 135 million households.

Redfin has data showing about 8 million homes are worth $1 million plus, so 5 to 6 million households at the $1.5m mark seems about right as an estimate - or put another way - about 5% of US households could afford Warren Buffets home (but maybe not on a 95th percentile income in Omaha, Nebraska).

https://www.redfin.com/news/million-dollar-homes-increasing/

Re: Warren Buffett steps down as Berkshire Hathaway CEO after six decades

#499

Post by pembrook »

Yokohiii wrote: post #465
sethev wrote: post #205

We should never idolize a person (in my opinion). Here are some things Buffet has done that I admire (notice that phrasing): - He consistently communicated with shareholders of Berkshire in a straight-forward and transparent way in his letters and annual reports. If you read these documents, I believe that you will have a solid understanding of how he built Berkshire. - He maintained a disciplined approach to investi…

I think moralism is an side effect of the demise of spiritualism in the west. We somehow have to shape moral values, the lack of a framework for it makes it feel blunt and chaotic. That being said, I find it odd to moralize on moralism. We have way too many people in power that are awful humans and do a bad job and never get punished. Meanwhile, stealing a car because you are hungry can be the begin of a ruined life.…

> We have way too many people in power that are awful humans and do a bad job

When was this ever not the case? And what makes you think that you (or any other human) are somehow morally superior and would do a better job if subject to the same environment and pressures?

The point is that power corrupts, so we try to design decentralized systems wherever possible that don't require absolute power to function (ie. free markets, the internet, etc). Trusting specific human animals to wield authority over us in a non-awful way is not a reliable solution.

> Meanwhile, stealing a car because you are hungry can be the begin of a ruined life.

Sure, but the overwhelming majority of people who steal cars are not starving. And thinking that being poor makes someone morally superior is simply an argumentum ad lazarum, one of the oldest logical fallacies going back to biblical times.

Re: Warren Buffett steps down as Berkshire Hathaway CEO after six decades

#500

Post by notahacker »

kamaal wrote: post #383
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most of compounding magic begins at ages 60-65, a time where most investors start to die out. Percentage-wise, few wealthy investors are dying out at ages of 60-65. In the US, males that make it to age 60 have a life expectancy of 81-82. But that's across all men - life expectancy is strongly correlated with wealth in the US, so a man in the top 1% could very reasonably expect to live to very late 80s/90s. Nevermin…

>>none of your logic makes any sense to me. Compounding is a function of time. More time you are alive, more you see in that time. This follows from definition of compounding itself.

Nobody doubts how compounding works. They doubt the logic of using that to argue that someone achieving a sustained CAGR of nearly 20% over decades and being recognised by peers as the greatest money manager of the twentieth century when he was already one of the world's richest man in his sixties actually achieved "fairly normal" performance mostly down to living a long time.
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