Warren Buffett’s Constraints & How He Did His Detective Work?

Warren Buffett while working at Graham-Newman in 1954 always admired their working style but he also developed his own style of research, he kept on reading & researching companies, visiting managements, attending shareholders meetings to understand more about companies and how cheap they are available considering their assets & business. But Warren Buffett had few constraints too, as it is mentioned in his Biography The Snowball,

His only constraints were the money, energy, and time he had available.

How He Did His Detective Work?

Warren Buffett developed his own style, he loved to do research of companies he started doing his own detective work,

To do his detective work he used the Moody’s Manuals – Industrial, Banks and Finance, and Public Utility. Often he went down in person to Moody’s or Standard & Poor’s.

Warren himself said,

“I was the only one who ever showed up at those places. They never asked if I was a customer. I would get these files that dated back to forty or fifty years. They didn’t have copy machines, so I’d sit there and scribble all these little notes, this figure and that figure. They had a library, but you couldn’t select from it yourself. You had to request things. So I would name all these companies – Jersey Mortgage, Bankers Commercial, all these things that nobody’d ever requested, ever. They’d bring them out, and I’d sit there taking notes. If you wanted to look at SEC documents, as I often did, I went down to the SEC. That was the only way to get them. Then, if the company was nearby, I might very well go see the management. I didn’t make appointments ahead of time. but I got a lot done.” 

Also Read: Legends Who Inspired Warren Buffett