This is probably the last article I write in english. The language you use and how you use it make a difference in what you have to say. Communication skills are important. For istance the language of business is Accounting. Its building blocks are numbers and numbers are important to evaluate a company. (Check out “the three As” on my website www.marcoturco.com)
As a result if I want to communicate with accountants or with people interested in an estimate of a company, numbers can prevail sometimes and will play a fundamental part even if they must be in sync with facts and a reasoning that can support them. And these facts and the reasoning must be well expressed in a proper language understandable to the audience or the reader.
But what if the reasoning and description of the facts of a business want to be predominant over the numbers? What if you care more about establishing first a philosophy of investing and then take care of the figures and numbers of a business? Then communication skills become even more important.
It is not my ambition to reach a large number of people. I don’t consider myself a writer and nobody would. I just write probably to sharpen my communication skills. Most of the people that read and listen in english what I have to say about the market or Value Investing already know quite a bit about the shareholders letters or some key concept of investing followed by value investors all over the world. The language of investing is english as it is the language of Aviation.
However if I really want to do something different and useful for somebody who wants to know more about Buffett, Value and the stock market, I will want to switch to italian, and talk more to an italian audience than an english-speaking one. I don’t live in Italy anymore since some years now, even though I come back every summer, but I always found a deep gap among the italian “experts” (the ones that can read everything in english directly from the source, follow the videos and podcasts and the shareholder meetings and what have you) and the “beginners” (youngsters or amateurs that find in the language barrier the main obstacle to fully understand what Buffett, Munger or Graham really have to say). Moreover the italian press and pundits often write unaccurately lame articles flooded with too trite assemblages of the main lessons of Buffett about investing, life and the market.
In actuality more than one italian friend, partner or reader asked me recently to be : simple, clear and less “expert-oriented” and more in favour of an hypothetycal non-professional italian student or want-to be-investor, eager to learn about the Art and Science of Omaha. Thanks to Buffett the “Zoo of Superinvestors” of Omaha went global.
So let’s start to feed a new generation of SuperInvestors of the future. Let’s assume this new zoo can be in Italy. Like I said, at the end of the day I write for myself, for my own pleasure and to remind myself of all the good lessons and achievements I earned from studying the masters. This is my canvas and in my own world I can paint whatever I want. It is my tune, and I spent my entire life studying harmony to choose the chords that I love. Investing is not different. If you want to build your own portfolio, it is like your own composition. You studied so much harmony and tunes composed by the masters that now it’s your turn to write down your chords and notes.
Let’s start from the next article: after all the comments around the world in english, I will add a comment in italian about the Warren Buffett’s “Letter to Shareholders” that the Oracle just published, february 25th 2023.
Will I be able to pass along to a very small italian audience the joy of giving more than taking? The infrequency with which we shareholders opt for look-at-me assets and dynasty-building?
I’ll try to do my best to translate in italian the “Spirit of Omaha”.
Cordially,
Marco Turco
I look forward to hearing from you in english or italian:
marco@blikebuffett.com