Let's talk about Warren Buffett. A thread. 1/ I grew up in Omaha, born and raised. All I ever wanted to do was escape. I loved hedge funds. Hated Buffett. The one day someone told me Buffett used to be the wildest fund manager of all. I didn't believe at first, but I learned.

2/ Berkshire was only a thing because Buffett had gone activist on the manager, and fired him ruthlessly. Okay. Now I was interested. Later I learned Buffett had an extremely high Sharpe ratio as a fund manager from one of his LPs' kids. This didn't make sense. Time to study.

3/ By now I was in Wharton. I had access to "WRDS" - an exhaustive database of survivorship bias adjusted fundamentals. Using tangible book and a series of value factors would not have produced good returns especially in Buffett's earlier years when he posted monster CAGRs.

4/ The story Buffett told about "bottom's up" due diligence and folksy stock picking was likely just something that played well to audiences that he learned to talk to in a Dale Carnegie speaking course. He certainly did value invest but usually with a crazy edge due to distress.

5/ I needed to meet him. So I managed to take over the "Warren Buffett Club" at Wharton, which carted Wharton MBAs off to Omaha each year for the Oracle's wisdom. Warren would laugh delightedly and say that he dropped out of Wharton and it turned out well. He's a great troll.

6/ In fact, he trolls a lot. Some examples: 1] being best friends with Bill Gates but his biggest position is Apple. 2] Saying derivatives are poison shortly before taking a massive derivatives position 3] trash talking investment bankers before bailing them out (Citi, Goldman)

7/ I won't ever forget when I asked him what he'd do with $100k today. He listed off 2 obscure off the run HY bonds he was 'salivating over' this morning and quoted them in 1/8ths. He said, "I would truly love having to start over with $100k. The returns I could make..."

8/ What was so memorable, is it didn't feel like the folksy Buffett talking about 'reputation being built over a lifetime'. He had the tone and eyes of a cold blooded, bond trading predator. It clicked for me in that moment - the whole puzzle.

9/ So many traders lose their edge due to the drag of huge scale. But Buffett couldn't stomach the thought of losing his edge. He loved trading, but he loved winning more. That's the difference between him and the vast majority of "Market Wizards". He gave up the game to win.