1. Herbert Allen made an exception for Ken Auletta, the first and only time a writer was allowed to attend and write about Sun Valley. “What I Did at Summer Camp” appeared in the New Yorker, July 26, 1999.
2. Interview with Don Keough. Other guests commented on Buffett’s role at Sun Valley as well.
3. Except Donald Trump, of course.
4. Dyan Machan, “Herbert Allen and His Merry Dealsters,” Forbes, July 1, 1996.
5. Elephant herds are matriarchal, and the females eject the males from the herd as soon as they are old enough to become dominant and aggressive. Then the solitary males approach herds of females, trying to mate. However, this isn’t exactly the way human elephant-bumping works.
6. Allen & Co. does not release the numbers, but the conference was said to cost around $10 million, more than $36,000 per invited family. Whether $5 or $15 million, that pays for a lot of fly-fishing and golf over the course of a long weekend. Much of the money pays for the conference’s exhaustive security and logistics.
7. Buffett likes to tell a joke about having worked his way up to this exalted state: starting from a trailer, then the lodge, then a lesser condo, and so forth.
8. Herbert Allen’s son Herbert Jr. is usually referred to as “Herb.” However, Buffett refers to Herbert Sr. as “Herb” as a mark of their friendship, as do a few other people.
9. This portrait of Sun Valley and the impact of the dotcom billionaires is drawn from interviews with a number of people, including investment managers with no ax to grind. Most asked not to be named.
10. Allen & Co. and author estimate. This is the total assets under management of money managers who attend the conference, added to the personal fortunes of the guests. It represents their total economic power, not their consumption of wealth. By comparison, the capitalized value of the U.S. stock market at the time was about ten trillion dollars.
11. $340,000 per car in Alaska, Delaware, Hawaii, Montana, New Hampshire, both Dakotas, Vermont, Wyoming, and throw in Washington, D.C., to boot (since the District of Columbia is not a state).
12. Interview with Herbert Allen.
13. Buffett had spoken twice before at the Allen conference, in 1992 and 1995.
14. Buffett and Munger preached plenty to their shareholders at Berkshire Hathaway annual meetings, but this preaching to the choir doesn’t count.
15. Al Pagel, “Coca-Cola Turns to the Midlands for Leadership,” Omaha World-Herald, March 14, 1982.
16. Buffett’s remarks have been condensed for readability and length.
17. PowerPoint is the Microsoft program most often used to make the slide presentations so ubiquitous in corporate America.
18. Interview with Bill Gates.
19. Corporate profits at the time were more than 6% of GDP, compared to a long-term average of 4.88%. They later rose to over 9%, far above historic standards.
20. Over long periods the U.S. economy has grown at a real rate of 3% and a nominal rate (after inflation) of 5%. Other than a postwar boom or recovery from severe recession, this level is rarely exceeded.
21. American Motors, smallest of the “Big Four” automakers, sold out to Chrysler in 1987.
22. Buffett is speaking metaphorically here. He admits to investing in things with wings a time or two, and not with good results.
23. Buffett first used this story in his 1985 chairman’s letter, citing Ben Graham, who told the story at his tenth lecture in the series Current Problems in Security Analysis at the New York Institute of Finance. The transcripts of these lectures, given between September 1946 and February 1947, can be found at http://www.wiley.com//legacy/products/subject/finance/bgraham/ or in Benjamin Graham and Janet Lowe, The Rediscovered Benjamin Graham: Selected Writings of the Wall Street Legend. New York: Wiley, 1999.
24. A condensed and edited version of this speech was published as “Mr. Buffett on the Stock Market,” Fortune, November 22, 1999.
25. PaineWebber–Gallup poll, July 1999.
26. Fred Schwed Jr., Where Are the Customers’ Yachts? or, A Good Hard Look at Wall Street. New York, Simon & Schuster, 1940.
27. Interview with Bill Gates.
28. Keynes wrote: “It is dangerous … to apply to the future inductive arguments based on past experience, unless one can distinguish the broad reasons why past experience was what it was,” in a book review for Smith’s Common Stocks as Long-Term Investments in Nation and Athenaeum in 1925 that later became the preface for Keynes, The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes. Vol.12, Economic Articles and Correspondence; Investment and Editorial. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
29. The comedian Mort Sahl used to end his routine by asking, “Is there anyone I haven’t offended?”
30. According to a source who overheard them and would rather remain nameless.
31. Interview with Don Keough.