Podcast
Acquired
The hosts referenced the book several times to illustrate Warren Buffett's investment philosophy, such as his reluctance to buy technology stocks and his strategic use of insurance float. In the earlier episode it served as the primary source for the discussion and was praised as an insightful, popular biography of Buffett. Both hosts encouraged listeners to check it out, describing it as a highly recommended read.
Episode: Berkshire Hathaway Part III
The book was referenced multiple times throughout the episode, particularly in discussions about Warren Buffett's investment strategies, his relationship with Bill Gates, and the evolution of Berkshire Hathaway.
This is a quote from the Snowball: No, it's not that simple.
That's really impressionant.
This is 1992.
Alice has a great quote in the snowball: She says Buffett avoided technology stocks partly because these fast-moving businesses could never be run by a ham sandwich.
He thought it no shame to have a business that could be run by a ham sandwich, he wanted to get Berkshire Hathaway to the point where it could be run by a ham sandwich too.
Alice actually just says that line in the snowball.
And he also, this is according to Alice in the Snowball, most of, not like all of Genri's investments, because as we've talked about insurance companies with their float, they invest the float in securities and Warren and Berkshire prefer to do that in equities.
Most of Genri's investments were in debt and relatively conservative bonds and the like and so Warren's worried about a equities crash coming along here because of the tech bubble.
He wants to essentially dilute Berkshire security holding, he doesn't want to sell security hold because that would be a signal to the market like Warren Buffett is selling stocks that might tip everything over into the crash.
He's like, how can I change the mix of securities that we have at Berkshire without me doing something like that.
I can do this all stock equity deal by Genri and essentially get a portfolio of 20 ish billion dollars of bonds that are going to be insulated from equity prices.
Boy that is some financial jiu-jitsu engineering right there.
He definitely overthought this one because Genri sucked to be blunt.
Alice writes in the snowball: Warren was already being ridiculed for his refusal to buy technology stocks. Now he had bought the light company. How dull.
Episode: Berkshire Hathaway Part I
It was the main source for this episode and was strongly recommended as an insightful book about Warren Buffett.
We owe a big big big. Thank you to Alice Schroeder and her wonderful book the snowball
I thought this book was awesome people talk about snowball all the time as the one as the sort of more Popular Buffett biography.
So definitely go check out both the snowball and Buffett great books highly highly recommend
Alice writes about that that every time He looked at spending money He would not see the sticker price for things He would see it Times eight or 10 or 20 of what that money would be worth in the future
So I bought my cigar butt and I tried to smoke it This is amazing You walk down the street and you see a cigar butt and it's kind of soggy and disgusting and repels you But it's free and there may be one puff left in it Berkshire didn't have any more puffs so So all you had was a soggy cigar butt in your mouth That was berkshire hathaway in 1965. I had a lot of money tied up in that cigar butt I would have been better off if I'd never heard of it in the first place