This may be the reason why Mr. Bufett did not hire either Pabrai or Spier to handle investments at Berkshire. Mr. Buffett has known them since their famous lunch in 2007 at the Smith & Wollensky steakhouse in New York City. Pabrai was also close to Charlie Munger.

There was no reason whatsoever for Buffett to even consider hiring them. They were run of the mill small-money investment managers who leveraged a winning bid in a charity auction to create careers as a kind of investing celebrity. They are good at marketing via association. The amazing thing is that both have managed to get themselves perceived as investing "gurus" even to the extent that dataroma has dedicated pages for both in their guru list. This is good marketing and none of this is backed by any exceptional performance as far as I can see,

To be fair, there has always been a demand for gurus dispensing wisdom particularly in investing which a lot of people find confusing. They are just supplying this demand. They seem like nice guys who are just running their businesses but I haven't detected much behind the level of hype they generate for themselves.

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