Billionaire investor of Berkshire Hathaway fame, Warren Buffett, believes the IQ score you need to be “successful” is no higher than 130 (via CNBC). But you’ll be relieved to hear that isn’t the sole trait that guarantees success. Especially considering the global average falls anywhere between 85 and 115.
So what is the secret ingredient?
The Oracle of Omaha largely attributes much of his own business wins to a steady temperament. Not intelligence.
“It’s a temperamental quality, not an intellectual quality, you don’t need tons of IQ in this business,” Buffett once explained when prompted about what makes a good investor.
“I mean you have to have enough IQ to get from here to downtown… but you do not have to be able to play three-dimensional chess or be in the top leagues in terms of bridge playing.”
“You need a stable personality, you need a temperament that neither derives great pleasure from being with the crowd or against the crowd because this is not a business where you take polls. It’s a business where you think.”
He added: “As Ben Graham would say, you’re not right or wrong because a thousand people agree with you; and you’re not right or wrong because a thousand people disagree with you.”
In the forward of his aforementioned mentor/godfather of value investing Benjamin Graham’s seminal finance book, The Intelligent Investor, Warren Buffett echoed similar sentiments:
To invest successfully does not require a stratospheric IQ, unusual business insights, or inside information. What’s needed is a sound intellectual framework for making decisions and the ability to keep emotions from corroding the framework.
Warren Buffett reportedly has an IQ of over 150 (anything past 140 is considered a genius), and while it has, no doubt, helped him become one of the world’s richest men, the lesson here is to value emotional intelligence (EQ) just as highly.
