Matt Frankel

If a company is beaten down because of current weakness in the real estate market, or because of tariff uncertainties having a temporary impact on the business, that's some of my favorite times to invest.

But permanent headwinds, say, regulatory changes, for example, can be a thesis changer.

I thought he was going to walk away.

He's 95.

His involvement behind the scenes, I'm guessing, has been declining for some time.

He can't do the marathon 12-hour days of being in meetings and things like that anymore.

He doesn't do interviews as much as he used to, and there's a reason for that.

I'm not shocked to see him turn everything over to Greg.

I wouldn't be surprised to see something else from Buffett toward the end of the year.

I don't think this is a total farewell, maybe just a short CNBC interview or something to that effect.

I wouldn't go so far as to say this letter is what I would have expected.

But it's not a surprise for Buffett to help ease the leadership transition in the minds of investors, because he's been doing that for years.

I'll certainly be reading these Thanksgiving letters as long as Buffett's around, but I don't expect them to be too heavy on investing thoughts or commentary or anything like that.

This one really wasn't.

That's where I'm at with it.

There's too many Buffett quotes that I love to discuss them all here.

I literally wrote an article once that compiled 100 different Buffett quotes that I love.

But if there's one that really changed my investing mindset more than others, it's the quote that, it's far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price.

In other words, cheap garbage is still garbage.

In my early days of investing, if you can even call it investing, I made a mistake that a lot of young investors make.