Warren Buffett Shareholder Letters (1977–2024)

All 48 annual letters from Warren Buffett to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders, converted to plain text Markdown for easy reading, searching, and use in AI/LLM workflows.

Why this exists

The original letters live as a mix of HTML and PDF files across the Berkshire Hathaway website. This repo converts all of them to a single consistent Markdown format so you can:

• Read them without a PDF viewer
• Search across all 48 years instantly
• Feed them into an LLM or RAG pipeline
• Clone once and have the full archive locally

Contents

48 letters spanning 1977 to 2024. Files are named by year (1977.md through 2024.md).

Letters from 1977–2003 were originally HTML. Letters from 2004–2024 were originally PDF. All converted to Markdown.

Quick start

git clone https://github.com/ReeceHarding/buffett-letters.git
cd buffett-letters

Each letter is a standalone Markdown file named by year. No dependencies, no preprocessing needed.

Highlights by era

1977–1985 — The foundation years Float, insurance economics, owner earnings, intrinsic value, the Mr. Market analogy, and the Ben Graham tribute.

1986–1995 — The compounding years Buying Coca-Cola, the moat concept, mistakes of omission, GEICO acquisition, and the full power of float explained.

1996–2003 — The bubble and aftermath The owner's manual, the dot-com bubble warning, 9/11 insurance losses, derivatives as weapons of mass destruction.

2004–2010 — Scale and crisis Berkshire at full scale, pre-crisis housing warnings, buying during the 2008 panic, BNSF acquisition.

2011–2019 — Legacy and succession Succession planning, 50th anniversary retrospective, index funds vs. active management, buybacks, GAAP vs. intrinsic value.

2020–2024 — Late Buffett COVID and doing nothing as a strategy, American tailwind thesis, Charlie Munger tribute, record cash position.

Generating the files yourself

A script to regenerate this collection from the original source:

pip install requests beautifulsoup4 pdfplumber brotli
python download_buffett_letters.py

The script (download_buffett_letters.py) is included in this repo. It skips already-downloaded letters so it is safe to rerun when new letters are published each year.

Source

All letters sourced directly from berkshirehathaway.com/letters/letters.html.

The original letters are the intellectual property of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. This repo is a format conversion for educational and research use.