READ

“Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers.” Harry S Truman

“The man who doesn’t read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them." Mark Twain

“My mind is a blend of so many books I can’t even sort it out anymore.” Charlie Munger

“What’s the best way to teach yourself? I did it by just a tremendous amount of reading, but it was easy for me because, you know, it was like going to baseball games or something of the sort.” Warren Buffett

"I just sit in my office and read all day." Warren Buffett

“Look at this generation, with all of its electronic devices and multitasking. I will confidently predict less success than Warren, who just focused on reading.” Charlie Munger

"I spend the bulk of my day reading the work of others whom I respect." Frank Martin

“Never stop reading. History doesn’t repeat but it does rhyme.” Seth Klarman

"I have learned more from reading than from formal education." Roy Neuberger

“It's just God's gift. If you're into self-education, there's nothing like reading. Of course, people do a lot of it have an enormous advantage.” Charlie Munger

"Well, I think you should read everything you can. I can tell you in my own case, I know by the time I was ten — I’d read every book in the Omaha Public Library that had anything to do with investing, and many of them I’d read twice. So I don’t think there’s anything like reading, and not just as limited to investing at all. But you’ve just got to fill up your mind with various competing thoughts and sort them out as to what really makes sense over time." Warren Buffett

"Read as many investment books as you can get your hands on. I've been able to learn something from almost every book I have read.” Lee Ainslie

“My job description is reading, which I love to do. We don't have too many meetings and things like that. A good amount of reading is not directly investment-related.” Mohnish Pabrai

"The advice I would give is to read everything in sight. And to start very young. It’s a huge advantage in almost any field to start young. If that’s where your interest lies, and you start young, and you read a lot, you’re going to do well." Warren Buffett

“Unquestionably the most valuable thing I’ve ever done is to read the autobiographies of great investors.” Nick Train

"We read a lot." C.T Fitzpatrick

"I don’t think you can get to be a really good investor over a broad range without doing a massive amount of reading. I don’t think there’s any one book that will do it for you." Charlie Munger

"My policy [is] reading every annual report in sight that can further my knowledge about anything." Warren Buffett

"I read a tremendous amount of books and papers." Jim Leitner

"Investing is one of the few things you can learn on your own. You can learn investing by reading books. I went to business school to learn how to be a good investor. When I got to Harvard, I discovered there wasn't a course on investing. I decided to open my first self-study program." Bill Ackman

“I either skim or read through 20 books a week. I get lots of books. I read a lot of biography and some history. I read almost no fiction.” Charlie Munger

“My whole life I’ve been a reader. I’m curious; I want to know how things work. Even more importantly I want to know what is going to happen. And what’s going to happen is often related to what has happened., I read history, I read psychology, I read finance and business. I read a lot of biographies. I’m drawn to anything that makes me a better person, make me a better investor and make me a better philanthropist or just makes me more knowledgable about the world.” Seth Klarman

"I started investing when I was 11. I first started reading about it — I believe in reading everything in sight. And I first started reading about it when I was probably six or seven years old." Warren Buffett

“A voracious reader, Kahn devours everything except fiction, which adds little value to his search for investment ideas. A close follower of the latest news and trends – he has read thousands of non-fiction books – most of which are heavily marked with his apt comments.”

"Frank Betz, who was Carret’s personal assistant in the Eighties, recalled that he read voraciously – not just corporate reports and newspapers but also books on philosophy, history, economics and biographies."

“The more and more and more we read, the more interconnected the world becomes, the more we recognize patterns, the more we are able to ‘follow the threads.’” Christopher Begg

"I am obsessed with stocks and investing — I read everything." Ted Weschler

"We read for the enjoyment of it. I mean, it’s been enormously beneficial to us, but the reason we read is that it’s fun. And, you know, it’s still fun. And on top of it, we have gotten very substantial benefits from it. My life would have been different if Ben Graham hadn’t gone to the trouble of writing a book, which he had no financial need to do at all. You know, I would have a very different life." Warren Buffett

"I have always found it much better just to sit and do your own reading. When I talked to people it would muddy my thinking. I was much more successful just sitting back, reading, and figuring things out." Jim Rogers

“Ideas come to me from all sources, principally from reading and talking. I don’t discriminate how they come, as long as they are good ideas. You can recognise good ideas by reading a great deal and also by studying a lot of companies and constantly learning from intelligent people – hopefully more intelligent than you are, especially in their field. I try to read as much as I can.” Li Lu

“Read 500 pages like this every week ... That's how knowledge works. It builds up, like compound interest. All of you can do it, but I guarantee not many of you will do it.” Warren Buffett

“I’ve found no substitution for constant reading to immerse myself in the flow of information that eventually results in ideas.” Thomas Gayner

"You should be a voracious reader and a sponge of information from other investors. With all the ideas out there, you do not have to agree with them or adopt them, but you should consider them." Larry Robbins

"I don't know of any successful investors who come up with good ideas without reading.” Thomas Kahn

"All I do is pursue analysis of companies, and read.” John Neff

"First and foremost, I read a lot, and we never use screens to generate any ideas whatsoever. Our ideas come from reading newspapers, books, magazines, analysts' reports, and even our competitors' investment holdings." Francisco Garcia Parames

“If it is wisdom you’re after, you’re going to spend a lot of time on your ass reading.” Charlie Munger

"Read voraciously. Learn more broadly about behaviour, philosophy of thinking, biographies and history. Get a sense of the possible. Look at the repeating cycles in human history. There's an abundance of material out there, so you can build your own invisible board of directors, if you will. That's incredibly important." Matthew McLennan

“I’m a passionate reader. That’s why being an investor is the perfect job for me.” Irving Kahn

"Read voraciously and wait patiently, and from time to time these amazing bets will present themselves." Mohnish Pabrai

"If you want to get good at investing, read a lot and practice a lot." Joel Greenblatt

"There are no short cuts to mental fitness. Much like compound interest, reading has compounding benefits." Christopher Begg

“I’ve always been a stock junkie, reading anything and everything I could get my hands on from successful investors.” Rajiv Jain

“I try to read at least five to eight hours a day. I read a lot of different things, including a wide variety of filings, annual reports, industry reports and business magazines.” Lou Simpson

“I spend an inordinate amount of time reading. I probably read at least six hours a day, maybe more.” Warren Buffett

"I can think of no better way to become more intelligent than sit down and read. In fact, that’s what Charlie and I mostly do." Warren Buffett

"I think its helps to read broadly, what good does it do to know everything about one little thing if you don't know how it fits into the world, and how the world is going to effect it." Howard Marks

"I’ve mainly learned by reading myself. So I don’t think I have any original ideas. Certainly, I talk about reading [Benjamin] Graham. I’ve read Phil Fisher. So I’ve gotten a lot of ideas myself from reading." Warren Buffett

"Read as much as you can about the markets, economy, and financial history. Never stop reading." Seth Klarman

"There is an old saying that those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it. So I always took the time to read about business history. I buy old magazines from eBay to read about great companies of the past that are long gone. I like to say the corporate cemetery is filled with ‘indestructible’ companies." Francois Rochon

"I read voraciously and still do. I read lots of business biography because it informs me about human behaviour, how people behave in their business life and how that effects how they will do." Chuck Akre

"Where I got a lot of my education from was reading history.  I'd go back and read about Edison, Ford, Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan.  The period between 1870-1920 is really interesting."  Marc Andreessen

"I read and read and read. I probably read 5 to 6 hours per day. I read five daily newspapers, I read a fair number of magazines, I read 1ok's, I read annual reports, and I read a lot of other things too. I've always enjoyed reading. I love reading biographies for example." Warren Buffett

“I think both Warren and I learn more from the great business magazines than we do anywhere else. It’s such an easy, shorthand way of getting a vast variety of business experience just to riffle through issue after issue covering a great variety of businesses.” Charlie Munger

"Recently I read an interview with Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett's alter. Munger is a great investor and a really smart, wise old guy; "I have said that in my whole life, I have known no wise person over a broad subject matter area who didn't read all the time - none, zero. Now I know all kinds of shrewd people who by staying within a narrow area can do very well without reading. But investment is a broad area. So if you think you're going to be good at it and not read all the time, you have a different idea than I do … You'd be amazed at how much Warren Buffett reads. You'd be amazed at how much I read." [Charlie Munger at the Berkshire Hathaway 2003 Annual Meeting]. Reading is definitely my thing, too, and I think you have to read not just business stuff but also history, novels, and even some poetry. Investing is about glimpsing, however dimly, the ebb and flow of human events. It's very much about breasting the tides of emotion, too, which is where the novels and poetry come in. Besides, sometimes you have to refresh your mind and soul by consuming some crafted, eloquent writing." Barton Biggs

"When it comes to investment, I believe some of the best books about investing aren’t written about investment at all." Tom Slater

“I read myself to sleep every night. I read enormously. I like doing it. Not only that, what I found very early in life was that once I learned to read and handle elementary math, I really didn’t need professors or anything. I could figure out almost anything I wanted better from the written material than from having some professor tell it to me, because he’d be going too fast or too slow or telling me something I already knew or didn’t want to know. And so of course I like doing it by reading. You look at [Andrew] Carnegie and [Benjamin] Franklin, they had a few years of primary school, they learned everything by themselves by reading. Whatever they needed, they just learned. It’s not that hard. Imagine educating yourself by firelight, no lamps, no electricity, after a day’s brutal work. Our ancestors had it tough.” Charlie Munger

"Don't limit yourself to just reading business and economics. Read philosophy and read the great economic thinkers." Frank Martin

"Curiosity is the engine of civilization. If I were to elaborate it would be to say read, read, read and don't forget to talk to people, really talk, listening with attention and have conversations, on whatever topic, that are an exchange of thoughts. Keep the reading broad, beyond just the professional. This helps to develop one's sense of perspective in all matters.” Peter Cundill

“If you can set your life up in a manner which gives you large chunks of time to do reading, but reading not from the context of 'I’m going to do an investment’, but reading from the context of getting better at knowing how the world works. You get to wisdom which is different from just being smart. You can build up an advantage over your peers.” Mohnish Pabrai

"Being a successful investor you need to be hungry, intellectually curious, interested, read all the time. Read a lot of newspapers. You need a certain level of randomness in order to connect things that might give you an insight into where a business is going in five years that somebody else might not see." Ted Weschler

"Successful investors are vociferous readers." Scott Fearon

"If you read widely, you can learn from people whose ideas merit publishing. Some of the most important for me were Charley Ellis's great article ‘The Losers Game’, A Short History of Financial Euphoria, by John Kenneth Galbraith and Nassim Nicholas Taleb's Fooled by Randomness. Each did a great deal to shape my thinking.” Howard Marks

"Develop into a lifelong self-learner through voracious reading; cultivate curiosity and strive to become a little wiser every day." Charlie Munger

"Read a lot, and read about the things that are not possible now, but will be in the future. As long as you keep your mind sharp and busy, you will see good things happen.” Irving Kahn

"I am also addicted to reading .. my taste is eclectic ranging from novels to history." Barton Biggs

“We read a lot, everything from SEC filings and conference call transcripts, to pertinent periodicals and industry studies. We work to gain a knowledge edge—a level of understanding of a business or industry that may not be universal.” Steve Romick

"I spend the vast majority of my day reading. I try to make about half of that reading random. Things like newspapers and trade periodicals.” Ted Weschler

"The early indications of change often come from outside the area that eventually is most affected (eg the Swiss watch industry was nearly mortally surprised by developments in the semiconductor area). Broad-based readings allows one to spot a change in one field that will impact another. Experts, on the other hand, are vulnerable to being surprised by events outside their specialized area." Bennett Goodspeed

“I get in around 7 or 8, and I read until about 7 or 8 at night. And I go home, and see my family, and then I’ll read for another hour or two in bed at night. And you know, there might only be three to four phone calls the entire week. So there are very, very few interruptions. I have a great assistant who knows everything that I read, and she kinda provides everything, and there’s a back and forth between us where I’ll mark it up, and give it back to her. And we have a system for filing and so forth. But it’s literally just reading about 12 hours a day of everything I just mentioned.” Todd Combs

"I've said it before and I'll underscore it here: I am a voracious consumer of information. I have honed my ability to digest a lot of information, sift out what's potentially relevant, retain it, and then recall it when it's useful. I read at least five newspapers every day, and five business magazines a week. I remember all of it, or at least everything relevant. I also like to read escapist fiction - mystery novels, spy thrillers - and I go through about one book a week. I usually remember nothing about them. Unless all of a sudden something becomes relevant." Sam Zell

“It almost doesn’t matter what you read. Eventually, you will read enough things (and your interests will lead you there) that it will dramatically improve your life. Just like the best workout for you is one you’re excited enough to do every day, I would say for books, blogs, tweets, or whatever—anything with ideas and information and learning—the best ones to read are the ones you’re excited about reading all the time.” Naval Ravikant

“I'm very selective. I, sometimes skim, I sometimes I read one chapter and I sometimes read the damn thing twice. It's been my experience in life, if you just keep thinking and reading, you don't have to work.” Charlie Munger

“I spend a lot of time reading. That’s how ideas bubble up in my universe. Mostly it is a serendipitous, non-quantitative approach.” Chuck Akre

“I am a voracious reader. My parents couldn’t afford to buy books for me. I would walk two miles to the public library to take out books. I love reading. The brain is a muscle and you have to exercise it. Right now 40% of all high school graduates have not read a book in the last year. People don’t choose to read a book. I try to read two books a week. It sounds like a lot but I am not reading physics textbooks, I am reading history and biographies and business, things I know about so I can get through them pretty quickly. I try to read because I am exercising my brain, I think if the muscle isn’t used the brain can atrophy. It’s very important to me. I am obsessed with reading newspapers, I read about four or five or six a day. Reading is everything to me. I think if you are going to be a successful business people you have to keep your brain exercised - reading and reading and reading. You never know what you’ll learn that will help your business career.” David Rubenstein

“We read a lot. And we read daily publications, we read weekly or monthly periodicals, we read annual reports, we read 10-Ks, we read 10-Qs. And fortunately, the investment business is a business where knowledge cumulates. I mean, everything you learn when you’re 20 or 30 — you may tweak some as you go along, but it all kind of builds into a knowledge base that’s useful forever.” Warren Buffett

“I read very widely, I am always reading stuff people are surprised to hear about. I spend a lot of time reading. Charlie says that he has never met a great investor who wasn't a great reader. I'd say that's mostly accurate in my experience." Bill Miller

"But you know I spent my whole life with dead people. They’re so much better than many of the people I’m with here on earth. All the dead people in the world, you can learn a lot from them. And they’re very convenient to reach. You reach out and grab a book." Charlie Munger

"There’s hardly anything more pleasurable, you know, than reading and reading and reading and reading. And Charlie and I do a lot of it. We continue do a lot of it. But I don’t do it as fast as I'd like to.” Warren Buffett

“Reading was my first love. … A really good book costs $10 or $20 and can change your life in a meaningful way. It’s not something I believe in saving money on. This was even back when I was broke and I had no money. I always spent money on books. I never viewed that as an expense. That’s an investment to me. I probably spend 10 times as much money on books as I actually get through. In other words, for every $200 worth of books I buy, I actually end up making it through 10%. I’ll read $20 worth of books, but it’s still absolutely worth it... The reality is I don’t actually read that much compared to what people think. I probably read one to two hours a day. That puts me in the top .00001%. I think that alone accounts for any material success that I’ve had in my life and any intelligence that I might have. Real people don’t read an hour a day. Real people, I think, read a minute a day or less. Making it an actual habit is the most important thing.” Naval Ravikant

“I’ve really read all the time since I was a little kid, it's been a lifelong thing. It's basically trying to try to fill in all the puzzle pieces for the big discrepancies. A great term is ‘sense-making’. Essentially, what the hell is happening and why? The world's an incredibly complex and erratic place and trying to figure that out ...is kind of a lifetime occupation. The thing I've tried to do the last few years is really ‘barbell’ the inputs. I basically read things that are either up to this minute or things that are timeless.” Marc Andreessen

“I met the towering intellectuals in books, not in the classroom, which is natural. I can't remember when I first read Ben Franklin. I had Thomas Jefferson over my bed at seven or eight. My family was into all that stuff, getting ahead through discipline, knowledge, and self-control.” Charlie Munger

“I think I learn a little something from everything I’ve read. I think that one of the reasons I was as economically successful as I was in life is because I read so damn much all my life, starting when I was about six years old. I don’t know how to get smart without reading a lot.” Charlie Munger

“At Lindsell Train we spend a lot of time reading. Company reports, broker notes, media commentary, academic papers, business and investment texts; anything we think might supplement our own analysis with external insight.” James Bullock

“I don’t keep track, but I estimate that I spend 80% of my day reading.” Francois Rochon

“One of the mistakes is that people do end up reading the same things. The only way you’re going to have success is if you’ve got a variant perception. The great thing about newspapers is a randomness to them… I want to look myself in the mirror and say I’m reading enough weird stuff that nobody else is reading. If you’re just reading the NY Times or the WSJ there’s no way you’re going to beat other people.” Ted Weschler

& THINK …..

“Some people think; others think they think.” Dickson G Watts

"Information cannot serve as an effective substitute for thinking .. Information without judgement and thought is of little value." Bernard Baruch

"The beauty of doing a lot of reading and thinking is that if you’re good at it, you don’t have to do much else." Charlie Munger

"Unfortunately, Bertrand Russell's observation about life in general applied with unusual force in the financial world, ‘Most men would rather die than think.’ Many do." Warren Buffett

“Warren spends 70 hours a week thinking about investing.” Charlie Munger

“I didn't understand, for probably as long as 20 years, why I couldn't convince people of almost mathematically analytical arguments regarding markets. And it was finally after years of this that I realized that people actually want to be told what to think. It took me a long time to understand that. Not me, see, I don't want to be told what to think. I think almost everybody wants to be told what to think. That creates a tremendous advantage in managing money.” Jeffrey Gundlach

“To make a success you must investigate and study yourself. Unless you change from a “lamb” to a thinker and seek knowledge, you will go the way of all lambs, to slaughter.” William D Gann

"Basically, thinking is the most important aspect of my existence.” George Soros

“I insist on a lot of time being spent, almost every day, to just sit and think. That is very uncommon in American business. I read and think. So I do more reading and thinking, and make less impulse decisions than most people in business. I do it because I like this kind of life." Warren Buffett

“The one word answer [as to what we spend our day doing] is reading. We as a team read an enormous amount, We have a library at Linsell Train; four walls of the room covered in books about investment, about economics, about industries. We spend much, much more time reading, taking notes and thinking, than the more action-orientated investors.” Nick Train

“The frontal cortex of the the brain, which is charged with rational thought and information processing, can make more sense of the world, given enough time to think it through, than the senses themselves can make sense of the world. In today’s information soaked world there may be stock market professionals who would argue constant data collection is the job. Indeed it would be tempting to conclude that today there is so much data to collect and so much change to observe that we hardly have time to think at all… We try to take Charles Darwin’s approach: de-emphasise the data collection and think.. When we try to understand the factors that made great businesses great, in our opinion, there is lots of time to think.” Nick Sleep

"I once described my job as sitting between four walls reading and thinking. That truly represents the majority of my day." Jake Rosser

"I would just read the, you know, I would read the Graham and the Phil Fisher books. And then read lots of annual reports, think about businesses, and try and think about which businesses you understand and which you don’t understand." Warren Buffett

“We do a lot of thinking and not a lot of acting. A lot of investors do a lot of acting, and not a lot of thinking.” Lou Simpson

"You don’t have to hire out your thinking if you keep it simple." Charlie Munger

"Unencumbered by the received wisdom of a business education, I had to figure things out for myself. If you think things through for yourself, you may waste some time, but you may also stumble onto something that has been ignored or disregarded." Leon Levy

“In order to be successful in the markets you have to be an independent thinker because the consensus is built into the price. So you to have to have a view that’s different from others. But whenever you do there a high probability you’re wrong.” Ray Dalio

"Accounting numbers, of course, are the language of business and as such are of enormous help to anyone evaluating the worth of a business and tracking its progress. Charlie and I would be lost without these numbers: they invariably are the starting point for us in evaluating our own businesses and those of others. Managers and owners need to remember, however, that accounting is but an aid to business thinking, never a substitute for it." Warren Buffett

"You can’t be a good value investor without being an independent thinker – you’re seeing valuations that the market is not appreciating." Joel Greenblatt

“You need to get into the frame of mind of thinking about what really makes one business more successful than others. What is their advantage, why are they making more money, and some doing just less. Why is it? The only way you can find that is studying the ones that are already established.” Li Lu

“Think for yourself is always a great place to start. Just think it through, do it yourself, and do it your way. Long or short.” Marc Cohodes

“The best way to think about investments is to be in a room with no one else and just think. And if that doesn‘t work, nothing else is going to work.” Warren Buffett

“If everyone is thinking alike then somebody isn’t thinking.” Frank Martin

“We read and think.” Ed Wachenheim

“The main part of my job is to read and think.” Terry Smith

“I can’t say enough about doing your own homework and then thinking about it.” Glenn Greenberg

"Frequently, you'll look at a business having fabulous results. And the question is, "How long can this continue?" Well, there's only one way I know to answer that. And that's to think about why the results are occurring now – and then to figure out the forces that could cause those results to stop occurring." Charlie Munger

“A checklist is no substitute for thinking.” Warren Buffett

“We spend a great deal of time thinking about the architecture of our investment philosophy and our process.” Christopher Begg

"If, in your thinking, you rely entirely on others, often through purchase or professional advice, whenever outside a small territory of your own, you will suffer much calamity." Charlie Munger

"We just kept reading and we kept thinking and we kept looking at things that came along." Warren Buffett

“We have yet to be swayed by the virtues of analyst teams and investment meetings. We’re old school. We mostly just sit around reading, thinking, and waiting." Allan Mecham

“Warren and I do more reading and thinking and less doing than most people in business. We do that because we like that kind of a life. But we’ve turned that quirk into a positive outcome for ourselves.” Charlie Munger

“A lot of times the analysis [on companies] is as much just thinking it through. There are plenty of times when there is information and data you can get, but in the end you’re trying to form a judgement about something and I don’t think the judgements are going to found on an excel spreadsheet. It is about thinking those things through as much as anything.” David Abrams

“I think right now there is a huge lack of critical thought. More people need to ask "Does this make sense? How does this make sense? What really is the end game here?" Marc Cohodes

“Sometimes much can be learned by simply stepping back from the hectic pace of business life and asking the question, “Does all of this make sense?” Frank Martin

"In life as in investing, what kills you is what you don't know about and what you're not thinking about." Bruce Berkowitz

"I began my life in the Great Depression of the 1930's. Along with millions of others, my family was struggling to get by from one day to the next. Though we didn't have helpful connections and I went to public schools, I found a resource that made all the difference: I learned how to think.” Ed Thorp

"I just spend all my time thinking, reading, and adapting as best as I can." Thomas Gayner

"This is not a business where you take polls, this is a business where you think.” Warren Buffett

“You have to have time to think. It’s so easy to get so busy that you no longer have time to think and you pay a huge price for that.” Charlie Munger

“I started work in the City in 1974, which is exactly 40 years ago, and people came in late, went home early and had a good lunch, and now they come in an awful lot earlier, go home a lot later and have lunch at their desk, and do you know the funny thing is I don’t think it’s improved investment performance. It’s actually what people do in terms of thinking that makes a difference, and really the sort of manic activity you now get from people working longer hours and more strenuously is actually the enemy of good returns, not its friend. Doing nothing is quite often the right thing to do.” Terry Smith

“We spend a considerable portion of our waking hours thinking about how company behaviour can make the future more predictable, and lower the risk of investment.” Nick Sleep

“Our system has been to sift life for a few opportunities and seize a few of them, and we don’t mind if nothing happens. And Warren is exactly the same way. Warren’s sitting on top of an empire now, but you look at his schedule sometimes and it says, ‘a haircut. Tuesday, haircut.’ That’s what created one of the most successful business records in history: he has a lot of time to think.” Charlie Munger

“If I had to pick one reason [for Greenlight's success] it’s critical thinking skills. It’s the ability to look at a situation and see it for what it is, which isn’t necessarily what is presented to you. When something doesn’t make sense, question it, challenge it, look at from a different way and you often come to the opposite conclusion.” David Einhorn

“This habit of committing far more time to learning and thinking than to doing is no accident.” Charlie Munger