Robert, we just focus on a few outstanding companies. We're focus investors.
—Warren Buffett
I remember that conversation with Warren Buffett as if it happened yesterday. It was for me a
defining moment, for two reasons. First, it moved my thinking in a totally new direction; and second,
it gave a name to an approach to portfolio management that I instinctively felt made wonderful sense
but that our industry had long overlooked. That approach is what we now call focus investing, and it
is the exact opposite of what most people imagine that experienced investors do.
Hollywood has given us a visual cliché of a money manager at work: talking into two phones at once,
frantically taking notes while trying to keep an eye on jittery computer screens that blink and blip
from all directions, slamming the keyboard whenever one of those computer blinks shows a
minuscule drop in stock price.
Warren Buffett, the quintessential focus investor, is as far from that stereotype of frenzy as anything
imaginable.
