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The article is about which matters more: smarts, wealth, hard work, or risk-taking.

Thought experiment: given a dumb person with $10M (say, Britney Spears) and a smart person with $1M (say, Warren Buffett), who is more likely to turn that into $100M within a generation?

I would bet money on the smart person. It's really easy to lose a lot of money if you make the wrong decisions.



But Ms. Spears wouldn't invest it herself. She'd place it with some popular wealth manager her friends recommended.

The spread between him and Mr. Buffet wouldn't be that high. I'd bet on $10m with a decent manager vs. $1m with Buffet any day.


Hasn't this effectively been proven wrong by the fact that Buffett has outperformed so many over time?


And Buffett thinks he could do very well with a small sum:

> "If I was running $1 million today, or $10 million for that matter, I'd be fully invested. Anyone who says that size does not hurt investment performance is selling. The highest rates of return I've ever achieved were in the 1950s. I killed the Dow. You ought to see the numbers. But I was investing peanuts then. It's a huge structural advantage not to have a lot of money. I think I could make you 50% a year on $1 million. No, I know I could. I guarantee that. "




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