Warren Buffett is the most successful investor of all time, and in the top ten of the world’s richest people.

Countless books have now been written about him, but The Essays of Warren Buffett (edited by Lawrence Cunningham) is the only edited compendium of writings from the ‘Sage of Omaha’ himself.

Most of Buffett’s wisdom comes from his famous annual letters to shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway, the fantastically profitable holding company he has managed since the 1970s with partner Charlie Munger.

Berkshire’s ‘class A’ shares are the most expensive in the world: currently over $300,000 each. For many years, Berkshire produced returns that way outpaced the rest of the market. 

Yet aside from a 4% stake in Apple, Berkshire has missed out on the boom in tech stocks. Critics wonder why Buffett is not spending Berkshire’s massive cash pile of £120 billion.

Buffett sees it differently. US stocks are mostly overvalued. When there’s a market crash, Berkshire will swoop in and get bargains. It did this after the crashes of 2000 and 2008.

Apart from an apprenticeship with his mentor Benjamin Graham in New York in his 20s, Buffett has always lived in Omaha, Nebraska. His approach to investing is a long way from Wall Street in every sense.

His letters to shareholders (actually long essays laying out his investing philosophy) are eagerly anticipated because they contain many simple nuggets of wisdom, amusing anecdotes and pithy sayings.

Buffett’s rule #1 for investing success: Look for underlying value. The key to winning in the stock market is not predicting the market’s direction, but in knowing the value of businesses, irrespective of their current quoted price.

Buffett criticizes investment advisers who waste their time making forecasts about the economy. The fact is, you can never see into the future. It’s much more important is to find good businesses that will remain good for years to come.