Inside the Mind of the World's Greatest Investor
In his 67 years, American financial analyst Robert G. Hagstrom has spent more than 40 years tracing Warren Buffett's career and thinking. When he felt he had gathered enough knowledge about the tycoon regarded as the world's greatest investor, he wrote and published his explosive The Warren Buffett Method, published by Hoepli, which, translated into 17 languages, would soon exceed one million copies, a bombshell for what is considered a technical book.
Hagstrom has now brought out the Spanish edition of a new book: How Warren Buffett Thinks, 288 pages, also published by Hoepli, the bookshop founded in Milan in 1870, which thus adds another title to its outstanding catalogue of more than 2,000 works, all technical and professional books, making Hoepli the leading Italian publisher and one of the largest in the world in the field of economics and business.
If in his first book, Hagstrom traces in detail the personal and professional career of the so-called "Oracle of Omaha", in this one, How Warren Buffett Thinks, he literally goes inside the mind of the man who is recognised as the best investor in the world. And he reveals his great contribution to the universe of business and investment: the concept that Buffett himself calls Money Mind, which the author leaves untranslated, universalising an expression that he describes as a way of thinking about major financial matters. It is also the synthesis of a general mentality for investing successfully in today's fast-moving stock markets. A mindset based on learning, adapting and ignoring what he calls irrelevant noise.
How Warren Buffett thinks: Inside the mind of the world's greatest investor, he explains the philosophies of self-confidence, stoicism, rationalism and pragmatism, and how they contribute to smart investment decisions. Hagstrom also provides an overview of the evolution of value investing, explaining how to develop a business-oriented investment mindset and describing the traits of active management. He also discusses some surprising facets of a Money Mind: those of the athlete, the teacher and the artist.
With his usual precision, Warren Buffett gave us a memorable name for a complex concept: Money Mind. As the author of the book says, "that term is easy to remember. And if at one level it refers to a way of thinking about big financial matters, at the next it encapsulates a general mindset for the modern business world. At yet another level, it identifies the deep philosophical and ethical constructs that lie at its core, so it will tell us a lot about the person we describe as a Money Mind: someone who is likely to succeed in many aspects of life, including investing.
And echoing Buffett's thinking, the author asserts that, when you put all those pieces of the Money Mind together, you begin to realise that you are on a new path. "A path built on virtue, prudent conduct, a sense of justice, mental fortitude and action. I can't promise that going down this path will make you rich; but I can promise that your life will be enriched," he says.
With this philosophy of life, which he applies to his business, Buffett has climbed to the top of the list of the world's greatest fortunes (as well as the list of the greatest contributors and voluntary donors). He has more than fulfilled the dreams he conjured up when, at the tender age of eleven, he read Frances Mary Cowan Minaker's One Thousand Ways to make $1000. Five decades later, Buffett never tires of repeating a phrase for neophytes: "Investing is easier than you think, but harder than it looks".