When you first start analyzing companies, it's easy to get bogged down in the details and feel a need for absolute certainty. To break free from that mindset, it helps to look at how Warren Buffett handles uncertainty—he’s a master at it. He often repeats the idea that it’s better to be “approximately right than precisely wrong.” This is a core lesson for anyone interested in .
If you look at Alphabet (Google's parent company) and Amazon, you might assume Alphabet is the better business. It's mostly software-based and doesn't require a lot of physical assets to run—a model of a modern, efficient company. Amazon, on the other hand, has old-school bones. It has poured billions into building out a massive physical network for its e-commerce business and has done the same for its cloud computing arm, Amazon Web Services.
When it comes to , price is the variable that can single-handedly veto any deal. You can love a business and admire its management, but if the price isn’t right, you have to walk away. This principle of triangulating between price and value—asking, “What am I getting for what I’m paying?”—is the backbone of any sound investment strategy. At a certain point, even the most incredible business becomes a bad investment if it’s overpriced.
In 1950, a young Warren Buffett from Omaha walked into Benjamin Graham’s class at Columbia Business School and found a system that felt like a revelation. For anyone wondering , Graham’s method was like a perfect cookbook: a formulaic, easy-to-follow guide with strict rules. It was a framework that would help turn Buffett into a billionaire. But over time, the student realized the world had changed, and the teacher’s old recipes were no longer enough.
Benjamin Graham, the man who would become known as the father of modern security analysis, was an intellectual at heart. He spoke seven languages and could quote classic authors in their native French, German, or ancient Greek. He was also famously absent-minded, known for inventing a new slide rule while also showing up to work in mismatched shoes. After graduating from Columbia in just two and a half years, he turned down teaching positions in math, English, and philosophy to support his family, choosing the one field with the highest earning potential: finance.
When it comes to investing, Warren Buffett famously said he looks for three things in people: integrity, intelligence, and energy—and that without the first one, the other two are dangerous. This same principle applies when you're in companies. Hitting your financial targets is great, but it's just as important to think about the real-world impact of your investments, especially in an area like that directly shapes our communities.
For a long time, real estate has been a reliable way for people to build wealth and generate cash flow. But if you’re just getting started, figuring out how to fund your property investments can feel pretty complicated. If you're new to , the world of finance can seem like a major hurdle.
You wouldn't buy a new smartphone without checking its features, reading some reviews, and comparing prices, right? It just makes sense. The same logic applies when you’re , especially when it comes to . Before putting your hard-earned cash into a Real Estate Investment Trust, you need to look under the hood.
My wife is a fantastic gardener. Every season, she's out there with a specific set of tasks—weeding, pruning, checking for pests. If she skips this routine, the garden she works so hard on won't flourish. It needs constant care and maintenance to produce the results she wants.