A wistful farewell to Warren Buffett's annual letters

Innovation and influence are very distinct phenomena.

- Jonathan Levin

Bob Dylan, for instance, didn’t invent folk music: he borrowed extensively from Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and others in the folk revival movement of the fifties and sixties, yet he became far more influential than any of them.

When he decided to go electric in the mid-1960s, rock ’n’ roll was already a dominant force in pop culture, yet Dylan became far more important for the genre than nearly all of the bands and solo acts that came before him.

Such is the relationship between Mr Warren Buffett and earlier finance and investing writers, especially economist Benjamin Graham, author of The Intelligent Investor.

Mr Buffett didn’t dream up most of the ideas that he espoused — many came straight out of Professor Graham’s teachings — but he brought them to the masses through the Berkshire Hathaway annual letters and gave us all a proof of concept through the company’s extraordinary performance.

In doing so, he earned his place as our greatest investor and our leading finance and investing writer. Without Mr Buffett, we may not be talking about Prof Graham at all today.

So, it was with a tinge of sadness that I learnt last week that Mr Buffett was poised to relinquish his most important annual writing exercise: the Berkshire letter.

As part of his decision to step down as chief executive at the end of 2025, The Wall Street Journal has reported that Mr Buffett, 95, will pass the authorship of the Berkshire letter to his successor Greg Abel. It is the end of an era, and a time to reflect on Mr Buffett’s accomplishments.