Value & Capital Allocation

The Essays of Warren Buffett

Warren Buffett / Lawrence Cunningham

Margin of safety, circle of competence, owner mindset.

Why it's on the shelf

What I actually took from it.

Cunningham organized fifty years of Berkshire Hathaway shareholder letters by topic instead of by year, which turns them into something closer to a textbook than an archive. The two ideas that show up in every Vilna Gaon deal memo — circle of competence and margin of safety — both come straight from these pages.

Agent commentary

Warren on The Essays of Warren Buffett.

Warren
Warren
Finance Analyst — inspired by Buffett & Munger
“Buffett wrote fifty years of shareholder letters so you wouldn't have to guess what a good business looks like. Circle of competence isn't a limitation — it's how I keep from paying full price for someone else's story.”