Hedge Fund - Wallace R. Weitz & Co.

Wallace R. Weitz started his Wallace R. Weitz & Co. in 1983, just 13 years after graduating from Carleton College with his BA in Economics. Weitz uses a value investing philosophy which has evolved over the years. Weitz characterizes it as a mix between Graham's price sensitivity and insistence on a margin of safety. He also has a conviction that qualitative factors allow companies to have some control over their destinies, and, to a degree, can be more important that statistical measures, like reported earnings. Specifically, Weitz looks for companies that are suffering from

temporary woes and are likely to return 12-15% over time. He likes to base his investing moves on common sense more so than trying to exploit event-oriented changes in share prices.

Wally Weitz has been called Omaha's Other Oracle, for insistence on value investing and his consistently high returns - and the fact he moved to Omaha, of course.

Weitz says the move was because he didn't want to raise his kids in New York City and he chose Omaha because that's where his wife is from. That's not to say Buffett wasn't influential in Weitz's life. Buffett was an important early influence. "I started going to Berkshire Hathaway annual meetings when they were in the National Indemnity lunch room and there were maybe six outsiders," says Weitz. "I don't know that I learned anything then that others who have followed Warren have caught on to 20 or 30 years later, but I was fortunate to have caught on to it early." One of the ways that manifested was when Weitz bought shares in Berkshire at $300 per share. "I sold a few at $600, thinking I could get back in at $400, but generally I've been long since about 1975 or so," he says. Berkshire remains his firm's largest holding. He owned 1,499,160 shares in the company at the end of the third quarter, 2011.