Forget Elon Musk: Invest In Businesses Any Idiot Could Run
An unpopular opinion backed by Warren Buffett himself
The recent FTX bankruptcy has shed light on a lot of bad business and investment issues, both within the company and with the narrative surrounding it.
But one of the biggest issues, one that now seems funny in hindsight, was the great attention received by the CEO and founder of the company, Sam Bankman-Fried. He arguably received more attention than the multi-billion dollar business he was running, something that resulted in customers, financial commentators, and even investors falling in love with him instead of looking at his company.
And even if there wasn’t fraud involved in this case, this should be a cautionary tale for all investors: good companies don’t require visionary CEOs, and visionary CEOs aren’t enough to make a good company.
Quite the contrary — when it comes to investing in stocks, famous billionaire investors Peter Lynch and Charlie Munger suggest there is a case to be made for investing in businesses that could be run by an idiot.
You Don’t Need A Genius CEO
To justify this unpopular opinion, Lynch used a very simple sentence in his book “One Up on Wall Street”:
