Warren Buffett Turns 96: Why His Legacy Continues to Shape Fund Managers Worldwide
| By Amaya Uriarte | 0 Comentarios
Warren Buffett’s 96th birthday, this August 30, comes at a symbolic moment: after handing executive leadership of Berkshire Hathaway to Greg Abel in early 2026 while remaining as chairman, the market is asking how much of his legacy survives beyond his direct management. The answer, to a large extent, is already written: for more than seven decades, Buffett not only generated historic returns, but also trained—directly or indirectly, through his annual shareholder letters—entire generations of fund managers who today oversee portfolios around the world.
Buffett learned to invest from Benjamin Graham, his professor at Columbia and later his boss at Graham-Newman. Graham’s school—enshrined in The Intelligent Investor—was based on buying companies trading well below their book or liquidation value, almost regardless of the quality of the business. He applied that approach in his early years managing his partnership, but over time—and under the influence of Charlie Munger—he evolved toward what he himself described as preferring a wonderful company at a fair price over a fair company at a wonderful price.
Characteristics of the “Buffett Touch”
Durable competitive advantages (moats). It is not enough for a stock to trade cheap; the company must have a barrier that protects it from long-term competition, such as a brand or a patent.
Pricing power. Buffett repeated on more than one occasion that the most important question in evaluating a business is whether it can raise prices without losing customers to competitors. It is the thermometer he uses to measure the strength of a moat.
Consistent and predictable earnings. He prefers “boring” and understandable businesses with stable profitability track records over high-growth but unpredictable bets.
Capital protection above all. His two most cited rules—”Rule No. 1: Never lose money” and “Rule No. 2: Never forget rule No. 1″—summarize an obsession with the margin of safety: buying at a sufficient discount so that a miscalculation does not destroy capital.
A horizon of at least a decade. According to Buffett, his “favorite holding period is forever.” In practice, he evaluates each investment as if he were going to hold the entire company for ten years or more, forcing him to think like an owner rather than a short-term speculator.
An Exported Model: From Omaha to the Rest of the World
Buffett’s influence, and his approach, directly inspired the birth of the European and Latin American value school. Spain, for instance, is the market with the highest concentration of value management firms outside the U.S. Speaking with Funds Society, Javier Ruiz, Chief Investment Officer at Horos AM, addressed a fundamental question: when choosing a company, what do you look for first, the price or the business?
“We do not believe they can be separated from one another. There are optically cheap companies that are not investable because they do not meet our core investment principles. For us, it is essential to understand a business and the sector in which it operates, that it has a solid and sustainable competitive position, a healthy financial profile, and a management team that performs well, both operationally and in managing the capital generated by the company. If all this is not met, we will not invest in a company no matter how cheap it is trading,” he noted.
Asked about holding periods in the portfolio, the manager indicated: “At Horos, investments coexist where we have never fully divested alongside others that have been in the portfolio for ten years, together with others from which we might divest in a few months because their share price has reflected our investment thesis very quickly. Logically, the primary reason to divest from a company is a reduction in its potential relative to other alternatives.”
Regarding the most common mistake for novice investors, Ruiz pointed out: “Possibly placing an excessive focus on valuation and not as much on understanding what lies behind that valuation. To know if we are buying cheap, a lot of time must be spent understanding the qualitative side of the investment.”
In Mexico, the most literal name in the local segment is Value Operadora de Fondos. But the Buffett philosophy also permeates larger firms like GBM (Grupo Bursátil Mexicano), which, without defining itself as a pure value manager, applies it as a guiding principle of the firm. As Andrés Olea, Financial Product Sales VP at GBM, explained to Funds Society, the search for value is in the company’s DNA: “At the firm level, it is indeed with a very long-term vision and looking for value: caution, good people, values, ethics, expanding its competitive advantage, but ensuring it is durable and not ephemeral due to haste.”
That logic translates explicitly to the wealth management unit: “In advisory, we have a methodology called ‘Invierte con Propósito’ (Invest with Purpose), which aligns closely with creating value over time and staying invested over time, rather than jumping in and out and executing tactical moves.”
As a concrete example in the Mexican market, Olea mentioned Grupo Aeropuertos del Sureste (ASUR) and highlighted that although it is experiencing short-term noise due to lower tourism and fleet renewals, “the quality of the company, its management, and the valuation at which it trades present a very good opportunity for those willing to wait a bit longer.”
Regarding the most common error for beginner investors, Olea is emphatic: “The worst mistake is overconfidence and thinking one can get rich quickly. The best way to build wealth, as Buffett did, is with compound interest on your side and the discipline to save. If you want to get rich off the next AI stock or the next bitcoin, you can make mistakes. So, I would say be patient and let working capital do its magic. Rather than trying to get rich through asset selection, trying to get rich through a long-term methodology with discipline is the path.”
In Argentina, meanwhile, there is no dedicated value boutique like in Spain or Brazil, partly due to the limited depth of the local equity market. The most common route for an Argentine investor wishing to replicate the Buffett philosophy remains indirect: buying CEDEARs of Berkshire Hathaway or companies within its portfolio, trading in pesos on the BYMA. This was explained by Sergio González, CFA, Head of the Investment Office at Cohen Aliados Financieros, and Martín Mejía, Analyst at the Investment Office at Cohen.
The choice of this route, more than a preference, responds to a regulatory constraint: “We do not consider setting up a local fund with that criteria because regulatory issues make it impossible. In Argentina, mutual funds (FCIs) cannot hold more than 25% of the fund in CEDEARs. For that reason, it is not possible to construct a local fund with the same criteria as the portfolio to invest toward the same objective as Warren Buffett,” they told Funds Society.
On the feasibility of sustaining a position “forever” in a context of high macroeconomic and exchange rate volatility, González and Mejía nuanced the literal application of that doctrine: “When talking about local companies, it is very difficult to have a client stay invested or hold a position for a long time. Logically, there are cases where it can be successful, but at the same time, the multiple variables affecting the Argentine market make it very risky.”
The solution again lies in CEDEARs: “We do believe we can build long-term positions through the purchase of CEDEARs under the logic of value investing. In this way, the investor hedges against exchange rate shifts and maintains long-term investments in international market companies,” they concluded.
