Shadowing Practice: Warren Buffett & Charlie Munger: Diversification - Learn English Speaking with Video

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My name is Mark Hake.

I'm from Scottsdale, Arizona, and I am very interested in your policies on diversification and also how you concentrate your investments.

And I've studied your annual reports going back a good number of years, and there's been years where you had a lot of stocks in your marketable,

equitable securities portfolio, and there was one year where you only had three in 1987.

So I have two questions.

Given the number of stocks that you have in the portfolio now, what does that imply about your view of the market in terms of is it fairly valued,

that kind of idea?

And second of all, it seems that whenever you take a new investment, you never take less than about 5 %

and never more than about 10 % of the total portfolio with that new position.

And I wanted to see if I'm correct about that.

Yeah, well, on the second point, that really isn't correct.

We have positions which you don't even see because we only listed the ones above $600 million in the last report, and obviously those are all smaller positions.

Sometimes that's because they're smaller companies and we couldn't get that much money in.

Sometimes it's because the prices moved up after we bought them.

Sometimes it's because we may be selling the position down even.

But so we have no – there's nothing magic.

We like to put a lot of money in things that we feel strongly about.

And that gets back to the diversification question.

We think diversification, as practice generally, makes very little sense for anyone that knows what they're doing.

Diversification is a protection against ignorance.

I mean, if you want to make sure that nothing bad happens to you relative to the market, you own everything.

There's nothing wrong with that.

I mean, that is a perfectly sound approach for somebody who does not feel they know how to analyze businesses.

If you know how to analyze businesses and value businesses, it's crazy to own 50 stocks or 40 stocks or 30 stocks probably.

Because there aren't that many wonderful businesses that are understandable to a single human being in all likelihood.

And to have some super wonderful business and then put money in number 30

or 35 on your list of attractiveness and forego putting more money into number one just strikes Charlie and me as madness.

And it's conventional practice, and it may, you know, if all you have to achieve is average,

it may preserve your job.

But it's a confession, in our view, that you don't really understand the businesses that you own.

On a personal portfolio basis, I own one stock.

But it's a business I know.

And it leaves me very comfortable.

So, do I need to own 28 stocks in order to have proper diversification?

It would be nonsense.

And within Berkshire, I could pick out three of our businesses,

and I would be very happy if they were the only businesses we owned and I had all my money in Berkshire.

Now, I love the fact that we can find more than that and that we keep adding to it.

But three wonderful businesses is more than you need in this life to do very well.

And the average person isn't going to run into that.

I mean, if you look at how the fortunes were built in this country, they weren't built out of a portfolio of 50 companies.

They were built by someone who identified with a wonderful business.

Coca -Cola is a great example.

A lot of fortunes have been built on that.

And there aren't 50 Coca -Colas.

There aren't 20.

If there were, it would be fine.

We could all go out and diversify like crazy among

that group and get results that would be equal to owning the really wonderful one.

But you're not going to find it.

And the truth is you don't need it.

I mean,

if you have a really wonderful business is very well protected against the vicissitudes of the economy over time and competition.

I mean, you know, we're talking about businesses that are resistant to effective competition,

and three of those will be better than 100 average businesses.

And they'll be safer, incidentally.

I mean,

there is less risk in owning three easy -to -identify wonderful businesses than there is in owning 50 well -known big businesses.

And it's amazing what has been taught over the years in finance classes about that.

But I can assure you that I would rather pick...

If I had to bet the next 30 years on the fortunes of my family

that would be dependent upon the income from a given group of businesses, I would rather pick three businesses from those we own than own a diversified group of 50.

Charlie?

Yeah, what he's saying is that much of what is taught in modern corporate finance courses is twaddle.

Do you want to elaborate on that, Charlie?

You cannot believe this stuff.

I mean, it's a modern portfolio theory, and, yeah, it's...

It has no utility.

I mean, it will tell you how to do average, but, you know, I think anybody can figure out how to do average in fifth grade.

I mean, it's just not that difficult.

It's elaborate, and, you know, there's lots of little Greek letters and all kinds of things to make you feel that you're in the big leagues, but there is no value added.

I have great difficulty with it because I am something of a student of dementia, and I have...

I can ordinarily classify dementia on some theory structure of models, but the modern portfolio theory,

it involves a type of dementia I just can't even classify.

Something very strange is going on.

If you find three wonderful businesses in your life, you'll get very rich.

and and if you understand them bad things aren't going to happen to

that those three i mean

that that's the characteristic of it by the way maybe that's the reason there's

so much dementia

if you believe what warren said you could teach the whole course in about a week yeah

and the high priest wouldn't have any edge over the lay people and that that never sells well Right.

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This video has 82 sentences and 1039 words to shadow. The speech runs for 7:12. The speaker talks at a steady 144 words per minute, a comfortable pace for shadowing. 86% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.

Key vocabulary in this video

15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
portfolio noun	/pɔːtˈfəʊ.liˌəʊ/	A case for carrying papers, drawings, photographs, maps and other flat documents.
dementia noun	/dɪˈmɛnʃə/	A progressive decline in cognitive function due to damage or disease in the brain beyond what might be expected from normal aging. Areas particularly affected…
fortune noun	/ˈfɔːtjuːn/	Destiny, especially favorable.
elaborate verb	/ɪˈlæb.ə.ɹeɪt/	Тo develop in detail or complexity.
analyze verb	/ˈæn.əˌlaɪz/	To subject to analysis.
relative noun	/ˈɹɛl.ə.tɪv/	Someone connected by blood, marriage, or adoption; someone in the same family.
strongly adverb	/ˈstɹɔŋli/	In a strong or powerful manner.
difficulty noun	/ˈdɪfɪkəlti/	The state of being difficult, or hard to do.
priest noun	/ˈpɹiːst/	A religious clergyman (clergywoman, clergyperson) who is trained to perform services or sacrifices at a church or temple.
dependent adjective	/dɪˈpɛndənt/	Relying upon; depending upon.
involve verb	/ɪnˈvɑlv/	To have (something) as a component or a related part; to comprise, to include.
utility noun	/juːˈtɪlɪti/	The state or condition of being useful; usefulness.
warren noun	/ˈwɔɹən/	A system of burrows in which rabbits or other animals live.
conventional adjective	/kənˈvɛnʃənl̩/	Pertaining to a convention, as in following generally accepted principles, methods and behaviour.
leaf noun	/lif/	The usually green and flat organ that represents the most prominent feature of most vegetative plants.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Meaning
figure out verb	To come to understand; to discover or find a solution; to deduce.
get back to verb	Return to (an activity)
go back verb	To return to a place or state after having been there at a previous time.
go out verb	To leave, especially a building.
move up verb	To promote, put onto a higher level.
pick out verb	To remove by picking.

Grammar in this video

The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:

Structure	In the video
Conditional sentences if + clause, will/would + verb — a condition and its result	If there were, it would be
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	were built · have been built · has been taught
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	I've studied · have been built · has been taught
Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing	somebody who does · someone who identified

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 23 contractions and reduced forms, such as aren't, don't, I'm. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “sh” and “zh” sounds: dementia /dɪˈmɛnʃə/, conventional /kənˈvɛnʃənl̩/, assure /əˈʃʊɹ/, confession /kənˈfɛʃən/, diversification /daɪˌvɜːsɪfɪˈkeɪʃən/
Long words — get the stress right: portfolio /pɔːtˈfəʊ.liˌəʊ/, elaborate /ɪˈlæb.ə.ɹeɪt/, difficulty /ˈdɪfɪkəlti/, utility /juːˈtɪlɪti/, characteristic /ˌkæɹ(ə)ktəˈɹɪstɪk/

How to practise with this video

Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
Shadow it sentence by sentence at normal speed, repeating each one until your rhythm matches the speaker.
Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like portfolio, dementia, fortune.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

Shadowing Practice: Warren Buffett & Charlie Munger: Diversification - Learn English Speaking with Video

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