TIP764: The Art of Buffett w/ Tobias Carlisle

You're listening to TIP. Today, I'm joined by my friend Tobias Carlisle, the founder and managing director of Acquires Funds. Tobias just released his book, Soldier of Fortune, Warren Buffett, Seung Shui, and the Ancient Art of Risk Taking. In this episode, Tobias and I take you through Buffett's biggest and most misunderstood investments, including the January Redeel and the BNSF Railroad acquisition, and draw on the timeless lessons from the art of war in doing so. We discuss how Buffett truly thinks about risk, why Apple may be his best trade ever, and why Berkshire's culture has its own frequency in the game of business and investing. Let's get to it. Since 2014 and through more than 180,000,000 downloads, we've studied the financial markets and read the books that influence self made billionaires the most. We keep you informed and prepared for the unexpected. Now for your host, Stig Brodersen. Welcome to The Investor's podcast. I'm your host, Stig Brodersen, and today I'm here with my good friend, Tobias Carlisle. Toby, what's going on? Stig Brodersen (zero 20 three:forty nine): You bet. We are here to talk about your new book, Sold Your Warren Buffett, Sun Tzu, and the Ancient Art of Risk Taking. Toby, I feel like to some extent we're going full circle because back in 2015, this was back on episode 25. This is more than a decade ago. We talked about your book, Devalue. I don't know if you recall, but I kind of feel it's full circle now. We're talking about your most recent book, and I don't know if it means anything to you, Toby. To me, it does because you were the guest we had on the most times here on the podcast. You hold the record. So I don't know if it's just said congratulations, but just thank you for being so generous with your time. Stephan Livera (zero zero three:fifty seven): Well, I'm very grateful that you keep on having me on because I love chatting to you guys. I love chatting to you. Stig Brodersen (zero zero three:fifty nine): Fantastic. Thank you for saying so. As the audience can probably hear from this episode, it's very much a conversation between kindred spirits. I wanted to kick this off by talking about a very iconic deal. This is the $22,000,000,000 deal between General Reinsurance Corporation, or Gen Re, as it's known, and then Berkshire Hathaway. So you already know this is between kindred spirits. We're talking about a deal that happened back in 1998, and still, we talk about it today because it was very, very special. Stig Brodersen (zero zero three:forty four): At first glance, for us who follow Buffett, it seemed like a very unBuffet like move. For one thing, Berkshire stock was used as currency, which was something that Buffett long resisted, and he even described the deal as having synergies. He had previously, and since joked that it's usually code for acquisition that doesn't really make …