The documentary on mute showed a clip of him buying Berkshire Hathaway—a dying textile mill. The voiceover (he'd memorized the script) called it "the pivotal mistake that became a masterstroke." Warren chuckled. A mistake is a mistake. He'd nearly poured his entire partnership into that mill because he couldn't stand a loss. The lesson wasn't foresight. It was learning to say "I was wrong" before lunch.
Warren sat in his Omaha study, the 2017 clock ticking past 10 p.m. On his desk, not a Bloomberg terminal, but a tattered copy of Security Analysis and a single peanut butter sandwich, crusts cut off just so. The 1080p web stream of his own documentary was playing on a muted laptop in the corner—his assistant had insisted he watch it. He saw his younger self on screen, speaking in that flat, rapid Nebraska cadence about "moats" and "candies." Becoming.Warren.Buffett.2017.1080p.WEB.h264-OPUS
The film's title, Becoming Warren Buffett , had always struck him as odd. Becoming implied an end point. A finished statue. But at 86, he still felt like the boy delivering Washington Posts in the pre-dawn dark, counting tips in a ledger he kept hidden from his father. The documentary on mute showed a clip of