Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist

by Roger Lowenstein

Yet Graham was far more than Buffett’s tutor. It was Graham who provided the first reliable map to that wondrous and often forbidding city, the stock market. He laid out a methodological basis for picking stocks, previously a pseudoscience similar to gambling. Investing without Graham would be like communism without Marx—the discipline would scarcely exist.

Buffett insisted on not disclosing his stocks because he was afraid that someone would copy him—thus making it more expensive if he wanted to buy more. He wouldn’t talk to anyone—he maintained that he was afraid to talk in bed because his wife might hear.10