Interview with Tobias Carlisle, “Soldier of Fortune: Warren Buffett, Sun Tzu, and the Ancient Art of Risk-Taking"

On our podcast this week we had a chat with Tobias Carlisle (Acquirers Funds) to dig into his latest book, “Soldier of Fortune: Warren Buffett, Sun Tzu, and the Ancient Art of Risk-Taking.”

I went into the book thinking "just what we need, ANOTHER book about Buffett" but this was actually different. He comes at it by comparing Buffett's investing strategy to Sun Tzu's Art Of War. It's really about Warren's attitude to risk and how he executed a few trades to de-risk Berkshire.

In the chat, we got him to walk us through three of Berkshire Hathaway’s most misunderstood deals (General Re, Burlington Northern Santa Fe, and the Japanese Sogo Shosha trades). I'd never paid much attention to these deals before I read the book, so I found the whole thing pretty interesting. He explains why each looked wrong at the time but turned out to be masterstrokes.

We also talk about what he calls "The Greatest Trade of all time" - Berkshire's Apple trade - and Warren's risk analogy, holding "a gun with a million chambers" to your head and pulling the trigger for an amount of money.

Hope you enjoy the interview. I don't think I've ever posted a link to my podcast here, but this episode is worth a plug so we'll see if the mods allow it.