The experience was pleasant and I found it a pretty neat idea and cool way to provide such a snapshot of the life of a great investor in a graphic book.
I read this book fast once and then re-read it for an awful lot of times. Was confused in the very beginning about those terms related to stock, marketing and share prices. I have two impressions in general: the illustrator is very talented; Warren Buffet was a really smart kid.
A few examples to show you how smart Warrant B was when he was just a kid:
When he was around 12, he sold Coca Cola. He bought a pack of 6 bottles of cola for just 25 cents and sold each one for 5 cents.
He distributed magazines and earned 175 $ per week at the age of 14. It was really surprising to see a young child trying to do business (I mean, that idea never occurred to me). He distributed the Washington Post and the Time’s Herald, 2 very popular newspapers at the time. He was very efficient and result-oriented: in an 8 story building, he cut the newspapers pile into a half, put one half on the fourth floor and the other on the eighth. Then he went from up to down, without carrying all the heavy paper piles.
He also managed to maintain the number of his clients. If one of the clients wanted to cancel a newspaper subscription which meant less newspaper for him to distribute therefore less money he would make, Warren would cancel it but approach to this client, asking if he/she would like to subscribe the other newspaper. In most cases, the client would agree to do so. It doesn’t change anything for him as he was distributing those 2 newspapers. But by doing this, he was not losing his client.
His first step towards investing was inspired by a book named: “The Intelligent Investor”, written by Benjamin Graham. This book inspired him so much that he read it throughout the night. He then came up a brilliant idea: “Why would have anybody thought about that?”. Later on, he had an opportunity to meet one of Benjamin Graham’s colleagues and explained him his idea. The colleague was very impressed.
The first company that received Warren’s help was GEICO. And then many others. Reds was one of them, who was in a deep financial problem at the time. Everybody started to consider him as a great investor and savor. His speeches were really motivating and inspiring. That’s how Warren Buffet became the World’s most successful investor of all the time.
In this illustrated biography of the World`s most successful investor, the drawings are really good and detailed. The illustrator shows a great sense of humor which grabbed my attention to the book throughout my reading. Even if it’s an illustrated book (My mother thought it was really a real, big book), it’s still captivating and it gives me some insight of how Warrant B started in business as a child and some of his major moves. Great overview book, though a little bit choppy and shallow at some points. But again, it is a graphic book, you should not expect a lot of depth in it: need more words and less pictures for that, right?
