Buffett's Biggest Blunders: The Greatest Investor's Greatest Mistakes

by Grigory Lukin

Warren Buffett is without a doubt the greatest investor of our time. A humble, down-to-earth man with a talent for mathematics and analysis, he’s managed to build a $350 billion empire known as Berkshire Hathaway in 50 years. He’s a voice of reason, a paragon of patience, the living proof that one can attain wealth without day-trading memorizing arcane formulas.
His successful trades, business purchases and arbitrage maneuvers have been analyzed time and again. Most Buffett fans know about his brilliant investment in See’s Candies or his lifelong love affair with Geico insurance. At the same time, however, there’s relatively little focus on the investments and business deals where he ended up losing.
It's impossible to truly understand one’s investing strategy without examining one’s mistakes alongside the successes. They are two sides of the same coin. Both must be studied in order to get a full picture. Instead, even though Buffett has been remarkably open and candid about the mistakes he’s made along the way, very few pay attention to them and learn by analyzing his actions.
Did you know, for example, that once upon a time Warren Buffett paid his shareholders a dividend? That he briefly invested in Disney but then changed his mind? That he tried and failed to corner the market on stamps – and chose not to become a car collector? Those are just a few of the 30 investing blunders contained within this book.
This book collects 30 summaries of Warren Buffett's investments that went awry. With summaries, charts and commentary from Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger themselves, "Buffest Biggest Blunders" provides an excellent opportunity to learn from the greatest investor's greatest mistakes - and to become better investors by learning about the missteps of the Oracle of Omaha.

Genres: Finance

78 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 25, 2015

About the author

I'm a chronic misadventurer with a malfunctioning improbability field. (How else would a Siberian end up living in Quebec City?)

I enjoy devouring hard science fiction, digging up obscure platypus trivia, overdosing on C8H10N4O2 and breaking laws of physics. (I try to put them back together when I'm done with them. Most of the time. (Sorry about Tunguska.))

Want to know more? Check out my books or my site!

Reviews

[Prem Sagar · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is a superficially written cluster of Buffett's mistakes - almost all of which most Buffett enthusiasts know of in almost as much detail as presented here.

There's not much research done on each error beyond what is easy to find ourselves - and annoying focusses on secondary things like how much the mistake would be worth today. What's more annoying is the "Lessons learned" at the end of each chapter which is extremely superficial and written like a college student's assignment.

It's not worth your time.

[Troy Stewart · Rating 5 out of 5]

I could not stop reading! This book kept me excited and I couldn't put it down. A thrill ride from one page to the next! My mistake was picking it up to read on a work night. I had to finally force myself to go to bed at 2:30am. Grigory Lukin is my new favorite author cannot wait to read more of his books. Good use of reading time.

[Ian · Rating 3 out of 5]

While not great, it's an interesting light overview for non-Buffettophiles.