I'm currently reading Warren Buffet's biography, Snowball.
A lot of it has taken me by surprised. My long standing idea of Buffett was that he was careful and prudent, but I'm surprised to learn how highly intellegent he was. the book references how easy school/college was and that he was the only one to get an A+ in Ben Graham's class. It was also very interesting at how OBSESSED he was with earning money, from a very young age, all his efforts revolved around how he could earn more and more money.
All that to say, there were a lot of serendipitous aspects to buffet's success, but I think more so he was just an extremely unique individual able to combine 1. very smart 2. very ambitious 3. very concerned with increasing his capitol.
I'm sure there were plenty of intelligent women out there who are just as intelligent, just as smart and just as hard working as Buffett but who never got their own shot. Buffett may be good. But so are many other people.
I agree with the view of Buffet as extraordinarily intelligent. If you generalize intelligence to the ability to mentally model and make good predictions about dynamic systems (such as companies and markets in this case), and recognize that humans have a great variance in the types and degrees of expression of such ability, it makes sense that there would be a handful of people who can almost literally see the future, from the point of view of the rest of us with less insight.
A lot of it has taken me by surprised. My long standing idea of Buffett was that he was careful and prudent, but I'm surprised to learn how highly intellegent he was. the book references how easy school/college was and that he was the only one to get an A+ in Ben Graham's class. It was also very interesting at how OBSESSED he was with earning money, from a very young age, all his efforts revolved around how he could earn more and more money.
All that to say, there were a lot of serendipitous aspects to buffet's success, but I think more so he was just an extremely unique individual able to combine 1. very smart 2. very ambitious 3. very concerned with increasing his capitol.