many of the best investors in the world are extremely well known through interviews and public appearances but one of the greatest investors of all time is hardly known at all I visit Omaha every year to listen to Warren Buffett and Charlie munger's lectures and the man who manages $15 billion and has generated almost 30% per year was sitting quietly to Rose back his name is Lee Lou but who is he and and why why do you need to know him Charlie made leelou an even better investor leelou has one of the most interesting backstories of all the investors I've studied on the show he's story of being hunted by the Chinese government fleeing to the United States stumbling into a Warren Buffett lecture and becoming an investing genius is incredible it's a story everybody should hear and it's also sprinkled with investing lessons for those trying to find success in the stock market so here is the story and investing philosophies of China's great investor a quick shout out to short form for sponsoring the video their super in-depth book summaries are my favorite way to learn the best ideas fast my recommendation is their summary on the essays of Warren Buffett my favorite book or browse their huge and growing Library across many genres don't miss out on a free trial and a 20% discount on your subscription by heading to short form.com Hamish leelu was born on April 6th 1966 in Tang Shang China it was the beginning of the cultural revolution communist dictator Mao was pushing to eliminate any shred of capitalism that remained in the nation this generation of T men was born in the darkness of a cultural revolution the Year Ma died and his Reign ended the city of Tang xang was hit by a 7.6 magnitude earthquake 85% of the buildings were destroyed and its estimated more than 300,000 people died leelu was among the survivors he was just 10 years old at the time looking back that devastating natural disaster in 1976 was very symbolic of the seismic shift happening in the economic and political landscape in China it was the beginning of many iterations of capitalist reform that has led to the much more prosperous country we see today but just like China itself leelu's journey to becoming one of the most successful investors of all time was extremely difficult he attended Nanjing University in 1985 first majoring in physics before transferring into economics in his fourth year he participated in the ill-famed tanaman Square protests the student Le movement began after the death of a pro- reformist member of the CCP who Yao bang China's economy was growing rapidly largely due to economic reforms such as increasing foreign trade but many believed that the growth was disproportionately benefiting a small group of people while those at the lower end of the socioeconomic scale were continuing to suffer and that was the time of Hope for the entire nation for this Young Generation it is a dream but of course it's also fear the CCP installed martial law using the military to shut down the protests many innocent protesters and bystanders were killed some estimates put the death toll in the thousands so people who participate would have to face one way or the other severe persecutions Lou's role in the protests made him one of the most Wanted students by the Chinese government say once you're on the China's most wanted list uh your name and and pictures began to appear all over on the radio television train station and bus station on the street Lou went into hiding fearing harsh prosecution from the Chinese government while being hunted he was able to connect with a smuggling Network which was helping students escape the country so I never thought I could escape and then I was approached while I was hiding with people from both inside and outside and they said they're organizing an extensive network to rescue people he needed to apply for political Asylum but many countries including the United States were refusing to take students France was the only country at that time accepted us so we all went to uh to France after fleeing to France he was able to migrate to the United States moving to New York to study at Columbia University the first 23 years of leelu's life were filled with difficulty that I couldn't even begin to imagine so he well and truly deserved some luck on his side and he got it Lou had received some scholarships to attend Colombia but he still accured large debts to receive his education one day when pondering ways to make some money a classmate said to him if you want to know how to make money in America there will be a speech at the business school that you must he knowing nothing about the lecture he walked in and sat down to learn about investing a friendly 63-year-old man stood in front of the small audience and introduced himself as Warren Buffett at the time Buffett was already a billionaire from his incredibly successful investing career but he was far less famous than he is today and over the course of the lecture he broke Lee Lou's preconceived notions of the stock market as a place of Ruthless and crooked Behavior I look at back I feel I'm inally lucky and I feel nothing but gratitude I feel lucky to accidentally Ste uh into uh Buffett's lecture at your class basically Buffett wasn't talking about stocks like a typical hedge fund manager from Wall Street he didn't view stocks as ticker symbols and prices on a screen to be traded but rather ownership pieces of businesses that should be accumulated over time Lou's investing Journey started that day in 1993 with a fundamental idea intrinsic value Buffett claimed that stocks acted different L depending on the time scale in the short run prices bounced around all over the place reflecting minor shifts in investor expectations the collective decision- making of thousands of buyers and sellers focused on economic Outlook the business environment or even the political landscape but over the long run stock prices trended towards the intrinsic value of the underlying business ironically the concept wasn't Buffett's original idea either he learned it from his Columbia University Professor Ben Benjamin Graham Graham is known as the father of value investing he described the market Dynamic by saying that in the short run the market is a voting machine but in the long run it's a weighing machine short-term volatility of stock prices meant it was possible for an investor to buy a stock for less than it's worth and to make money as the price trended back towards its true value intrinsic value in the case of stocks is derived from the profitability and the net assets of the business or in other words theore ically if you owned the whole business how much cash could you pull out of that business over its remaining life the relatively simple concept fascinated Lee Lou and he became obsessed with studying the investing journeys of Warren Buffett and his investing partner Charlie Munga when he graduated in 1996 Lou had already earned phenomenal returns by applying the principles he was a guy who was on student loans he had no money and on the float of the student loans which is you know you know he would get the money in you know January maybe has to pay it in April or something he said he would invest the float of the student loans and when he graduated he had a million dollars Not only was he spending countless hours researching and analyzing companies but he also earned his Bachelors in economics and MBA and finished law school all at the same time he then went straight into the investment banking World working for 2 years while continuing to invest his own money in 1998 he decided it was time to try running his own firm so he founded Himalaya Capital right at the beginning of the Asian financial crisis the Meltdown started In tha land huge foreign debts forced the country to unpeg its currency from the US dollar causing it to collapse and the economy along with it the pain spread to other Southeast Asian countries and then to Japan and South Korea as their currencies collapsed too stocks across Asian financial markets fell in a meaningful way and this was Lee's opportunity to invest in businesses below intrinsic value he describes investing in the shares of what he considered to be great Asian companies Great businesses are the ones who really have above average returners to invested Capital what makes a great company is in essence the same as what makes a great investor it's able to invest money into assets and produce lots of profit in return the problem is that if one business is able to do it why couldn't other businesses competing against it just replicate what they have and this is where the concept of the economic moat is really important truly good business is the one who can f off competitors we can really have enduring competitive Advantage the business needs to be able to produce High Returns on Capital but also be able to defend those returns from the many other businesses competing against it this is called an economic moot some kind of characteristic about the business that can't be replicated by High competition running shoes are all pretty similar at a basic level so why does Nike sell far more than its competitors well it's because it has something that they can't replicate the Nike brand the history the cultural and social significance that make their shoes more desirable than other brands each time is different you have to really look for each specific company company in specific ways no two companies or Industries are the same so you need to get good at figuring out which elements are important in each case and this is particularly the case when it comes to management well in a lot of the companies uh the management will make a big differences the culture of those management were produced will make a big differences but in the small set of experiences management really matters almost nothing one of the most important things that leelo figured out is that you need to be both a generalist and a specialist at different stages of the investing process well in a sense you always want to be a generalist uh in term of a student of businesses but by the time you really get into the companies you really decided to invest you really better become a true specialist have a broad interest that allows you to scan many types of businesses and then a willingness to become an expert in the few areas you ultimately decide to invest in going back to the Asian financial crisis found some companies he considered to be high quality and was able to buy them far below intrinsic value because the crisis had pulled everything down in his first year running Himalaya Capital his fund lost 19% but he held on to his bets within 2 years the suffering Asian economies received bailouts from the IMF and China and as the economies recovered lose investment surged in price investing through this crisis gave Lou a deeper understanding of risk the traditional Finance industry believes the biggest risk to the investor is volatility but the truth is that the biggest risk is permanent loss of capital if the underlying business behind the stock is strong and there's very little risk of it going out of business then price movements on a week by- week or monthly basis are completely irrelevant in fact not only is volatility not a risk it's also an opportunity to own great businesses at better prices unfortunately his client didn't see it that way Lou's poor short-term performance led many of his investors to take their money out of his fund they couldn't grasp the idea that the short-term prices didn't reflect the long-term value of the companies that he had bought with their money it's the fundamental problem with the traditional Finance industry Lou would find the solution to his problem through his friendship with Charlie Munga he'd been Lou's Mentor from afar for years through the lessons he and Warren Buffett shared each year at the birkshire pathaway shareholder meetings during their first in-depth conversation in 2003 Munga said it was the same problem that he had faced himself when running his own investing partnership a few decades back the solution came down to the structure of the fund uh find clients and only work with clients who are willing to be locked into long-term contracts so they can't withdraw money during periods of poor performance and then most of the time have your doors closed to new clients so you don't have this constant need to find new investing opportunities to invest that new money Lou did just that even receiving investment from manga himself and his performance since then has been astounding Himalaya Capital earned 36% per year returns net of expenses from 2004 to 2009 and from 1998 when it was founded to 2010 The Firm grew invest the money 20 times in size today Lou manages almost $15 billion in assets most of which is invested outside of the US if you enjoyed this deep dive into 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