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One of the keys to Warren Buffett’s success is not taking shortcuts. While many investors rely on news sources for brief information about a company’s latest financials, the world’s most famous investor reads every page of the company reports.
“It’s amazing what you can find when you just turn the page,” Buffett said at Berkshire Hathaway’s 2025 shareholder meeting. “I would say that turning every page is one important ingredient to bring to the investment field. And very few people do turn every page, and the ones who turn every page aren’t going to tell you what they’re finding, so you got to do a little of it yourself.”
Key Takeaways
- Buffett, an avid reader, says one of the keys to being a good investor is “turning every page.”
- This means examining every sentence of investment literature published by publicly traded companies.
- Reading and analyzing everything can help you to better understand companies and increase the chances of making the right investment choices.
- Turning every page helped Buffett unearth the undervalued businesses with strong fundamentals that made him billions.
What Does ‘Turn Every Page’ Mean?
Turning every page means examining all investment literature published by the publicly traded companies you are invested in or considering investing in. That includes the 10-Ks, 10-Qs, and 8-Ks they are required to file with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
And it’s not just reading. These statements need to be deeply analyzed and compared to previous filings and those from similar companies. Everything must be absorbed, from the balance sheet and income and cash flow statements to management’s commentary and the footnotes.
The goal is to fully understand what the company does, how it’s run, its strengths and weaknesses, how it ranks against peers and past performance, and if it makes a good investment at the current price.
Understanding this can be very time-consuming. However, it gets easier with experience, and what you learn will turn you into a much better investor who is capable of spotting both red flags and opportunities others may be missing.
How Can You Apply Buffett’s Method?
It should be noted that Buffett suggests that the average investor just put their money in a low-cost S&P 500 index exchange-traded fund (ETF). But if you want to try to replicate his approach and find companies worth investing in, you need to start with time and a passion for stocks. An understanding of the various technical terms and the fundamentals of each business sector is also necessary. What could be a red flag, say, for a retailer might be totally normal for an aerospace and defense company.
Information about what Buffett looks for in company statements can be found in the book “Warren Buffett and the Interpretation of Financial Statements.” Key things he generally wants to see are:
Screening for these requirements can help identify good businesses. However, they aren’t the only thing you should focus on. If you want to really invest like Buffett, you need to look at every page.
The Bottom Line
Often, the most successful people in their field got to where they are by being obsessive about their craft. Buffett is no exception. The Oracle of Omaha didn’t make billions by chance. His success came from leaving no stone unturned in his hunt for investments, which he mainly achieved by reading every page he could get his hands on, and continuing this habit throughout his career, even after he had long mastered company accounts and was already incredibly rich.
