Buffett’s strategy in picking managers stems from this: he’s better at picking good people, than training new ones. He’s content with people having a different style so long as their reasoning is sound, and their record is excellent.

In any case, Berkshire will change when he’s gone. There will be no doubt about that. But what’s to prevent it becoming an operating company that pays dividends, instead of allocating all of the excess cash it generates? While investing float will always be an important part of the insurance business, Berkshire could very easily start to divest itself of operating businesses or remain a conglomerate and just pay an annual dividend (perhaps like Fairfax Financial Holdings, and its yearly dividend).

“Q. With small sums of money, what strategies would you pursue?

Buffett: If I were working with small sums of money, it would open up thousands of possibilities. We have found very mispriced bonds. We found them in Korea a few years ago. You could make big returns but had to be of small size. I wouldn’t be in currencies with a small amount of money. I had a friend who used to buy tax liens. I’d look in small stocks or specialized bonds…”

So, small stocks and specialized bonds. For the bonds, you’d need a better broker than I have. For the small stocks, it just takes a lot of work. I have almost all of my holdings in companies smaller than 100 million, and in general, there is more mispricing in small companies, because larger, smarter investors aren’t sufficiently compensated to exploit them.

Learning to apply it is where I would appreciate the most help!

Also, I think Buffett has kept some tricks close to his sleeve. He made a comment a few years back that if he were to start over with $1M, he could make 50% annually by pursuing a much different strategy than Berkshire. Unfortunately, he didn’t include this strategy in the Berkshire owner’s manual.

And just to clarify, Buffett has never published a book.

So in terms of generic theory, Buffett is the man but when it comes down to trying to learn how to apply it, Buffett has left it to the masses to figure it out.