When Warren Buffett speaks, investors listen. His fiftieth annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders published Saturday, is called a “must read” by the financial news site TheStreet and is getting even more attention than usual because in it, the 84-year-old announces he has found a successor (but doesn’t say who that is).

He also mentions two books. MarketWatch  picked up on the story and both titles raced into the top 100 on Amazon’s sales rankings.

Of Fred Schwed’s Where Are the Customers’ Yachts?: Or A Good Hard Look At Wall Street (Wiley, 2006), first published in the 1940s, Buffet says, “If you haven’t read Schwed’s book, buy a copy at our annual meeting. Its wisdom and humor are truly priceless.”

He counsels against financial advisors, warning that most of them “are far better at generating high fees than they are at generating high returns. In truth, their core competence is salesmanship” and says investors would be better off reading Jack Bogle’s The Little Book of Common Sense Investing (Wiley, 2007; OverDrive Sample).

He also quoted Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, but that mention did not have a perceptible effect on sales.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 2nd, 2015 at 8:55 am and is filed under Business, Nonfiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.