Warren Buffett’s Ground Rules: Words of Wisdom from the Partnership Letters of the World’s Greatest Investor by Jeremy C. Miller

Warren Buffett’s Ground Rules: Words of Wisdom from the Partnership Letters of the World’s Greatest Investor by Jeremy C. Miller

Part I

CHAPTER 1
ORIENTATION
“The availability of a quotation for your business interest
(stock) should always be an asset to be utilized if desired. If it
gets silly enough in either direction, you take advantage of it.”
—JULY 12, 1966
Picture yourself in Omaha, Nebraska: It is early one evening in the fall
of 1956. Elvis just debuted on The Ed Sullivan Show and Eisenhower is
in the White House. Tonight, you and twenty other adults are filing into a
classroom at the University of Nebraska Omaha for the first lecture in a
course called “Investment Principles.” Your teacher will be a
twentysomething named Warren Buffett. As it turns out, you’ve chosen
the seat next to Buffett’s Aunt Alice, one of the original seven investors
in his first partnership.
I like to think of this book, in its own way, as a re-creation of that
early “Investing Principles” class, drawing on the lessons he taught in the
Partnership Letters that were written during the very time this course was
offered. It’s your annotated guide to the basics of intelligent investing, as
told through the key excerpts from almost forty of these early letters.
These were the pre-Berkshire years, 1956 to 1970, a time when his
capital was modest and his opportunity set was unbounded. It was a time,
especially in the early days of the Partnership, when he was most like
you and me in that he was able to invest in nearly everything, when no
companies were too small for him to be interested.
Buffett, while investing during the day, really did teach an evening
class throughout the late 1950s and 1960s and his Aunt Alice, along with
a few other eventual partners, really did attend his class. After
completing Dale Carnegie’s course to overcome his discomfort with
public speaking, Buffett taught as a way to keep up his skills. Not only

Warren Buffett’s Ground Rules: Words of Wisdom from the Partnership Letters of the World’s Greatest Investor by Jeremy C. Miller