Items12The creator’s order
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Warren BuffettBorn 30 Aug 1930The benchmark. For six decades Buffett wrote Berkshire Hathaway's letter himself, in plain English, as if to his sisters, explaining how insurance float funds the company and why he valued businesses as he did. The candour is what sets them apart: he called the Dexter Shoe purchase his worst deal…0i - 2
Charlie MungerBorn 1 Jan 1924Munger's letters to shareholders of Wesco Financial, the Berkshire affiliate he chaired, are shorter and blunter than Buffett's and less widely read, which is a shame. He set out exactly how Wesco's assets should be valued and repeatedly told shareholders the stock was not worth more than that,…0i - 3
John C. BogleBorn 8 May 1929As Vanguard's chairman, Bogle used the annual report letters to make one argument over and over, that costs eat returns, and to criticise his own industry's fees while doing it. Because Vanguard is owned by its funds, his letters spoke to investors as the owners, and the consistency is striking:…0i - 4
Prem WatsaBorn 5 Aug 1950Watsa has written Fairfax Financial's letter since the 1980s, opening each with a table of book value growth so readers can judge him on one number. He is unusually open about bets that went against him, such as the deflation hedges and stock market shorts that cost Fairfax heavily in the 2010s,…0i - 5
Jeff BezosBorn 12 Jan 1964Bezos's first letter, in 1997, told Amazon shareholders the company would put long-term market leadership ahead of short-term profits, and he reattached it to every letter he wrote until stepping down as chief executive in 2021. That is the clearest consistency test on this list, and Amazon broadly…0i - 6
Jamie DimonBorn 13 Mar 1956Dimon's JPMorgan Chase letters are long, sometimes very long, but they are organised and specific: capital, risk, each business line, then his views on regulation and the economy. The letter after the 2012 London Whale trading loss addressed it head-on, accepting blame and setting out which risk…0i - 7
Reed HastingsBorn 8 Oct 1960Under Hastings, Netflix swapped the usual polished quarterly release for a plain letter to shareholders, followed by a recorded interview, setting out subscriber numbers, forecasts and the reasoning behind big bets on streaming and original shows. It also missed its own forecasts in public and said…0i - 8
Terry Smith (businessman)Smith's annual letter to Fundsmith investors restates the same three-part strategy every year, buy good companies, do not overpay, do nothing, and then grades the fund against it with tables and plain explanations. Its value for this list is the later letters, written during years of…0i - 9
Seth KlarmanBorn 21 May 1957Klarman's letters to clients of Baupost, a private fund, are not public, but copies have circulated for years because they explain value investing so plainly: why holding cash can be the right call, how he thinks about risk rather than volatility, and when he got things wrong. Treat them as client…0i - 10
Howard Marks (investor)Marks writes memos to Oaktree's clients rather than shareholder letters, and he has published them openly since 1990. They earn a place for clarity: each takes one idea, such as market cycles, risk or the limits of forecasting, and explains it with examples. His January 2000 memo on the technology…0i
