KEY POINTS:
The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life
By Alice Schroeder (Bloomsbury)
There are two problems with this book on Warren Buffett, the greatest investor in the world: first, it is enormously long, and second, it is an authorised biography, so it might not dish the dirt.
Don't let either objection put you off: it is an absorbing read.
The book is about the snowballing of Buffett's wealth, but also about "the business of life" as he sees it.
In both spheres, his basic principle is to behave according to his "Inner Scorecard" - doing what he feels to be correct, rather than using the "Outer Scorecard" and measuring himself by the opinions of others.
Unlike the recently disgraced Wall Street tycoons, he is indifferent to the trappings of wealth.
His rules of investment are straightforward: distrust debt; build in a margin of safety; be in there for the long term; don't invest in something you don't understand. Surely anyone could do that, so why is there only one Buffett?
The answer is that it demands a resolute independence of mind that eludes other investors. Buffett was derided for his refusal to participate in the dotcom boom, but he was proved right.
As early as 2003, he was warning that the derivatives behind the current credit crunch were "weapons of financial mass destruction"; he is now buying at rock bottom prices.
The Buffett who emerges from these pages is unorthodox, honest, gifted and, in many ways, admirable. As an investor, he is a colossus. In the business of life, however, one suspects that this complex man has rather a lot of debits, as well as credits, on his personal balance sheet. '
