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Comment by AstralStorm | Hacker News Reader

He's also a believer in long term investing and can afford moves other investors would shirk from.

How he got his initial money is not a particularly nice story of success...

I think he actually has less opportunities than smaller investors. He complains about that a lot. He is managing a lot of money so he can only buy large cap companies. He frequently claims it's much easier to get a higher returns when you can buy all kinds of companies (big, med and small cap).

> How he got his initial money is not a particularly nice story of success...

Could you expand on this? I'm genuinely curious

Buffett has talked about looking for "elephant" sized acquisitions. Berkshire is so large that it becomes difficult to find good investments of a sufficient size to move the needle. As a smaller investor, I can buy portions of a few $1B market cap companies and make a difference in my portfolio. Buffett, even if he bought such companies outright at a 20% premium, would need to find about 100 of them.

> How he got his initial money is not a particularly nice story of success...

The actual purchase of the failing Berkshire Hathaway textile company perhaps (unless this is about Buffett doing something allegedly unethical)? The textile operation ultimately failed in the mid 1980s, but Buffett was able to, in the meantime, reallocate its cash flows to more promising ventures.

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