Quote from stockeroo:
And I agree w/ Gabfly, Soros would be part of those 5-10 incredible investors, so no need to argue which is best, they both did it. The question is why them and not everyone else, not who is better.
Not to take away the skills of Soros and Buffett, as they certainly are great traders and investors. But I think your question, or quest, has, at least partially, a survivorship bias. You are looking at the two among the top who had made it, out of tens of thousands or even millions who had attempted. You know what they say... observe a million chims throwing darts on a Wall Street Journal to buy stocks, there bound to be one or two chims who can become millionaires.
There can be dozen others who started the same time as Buffett, viewed the market in the same way, invested using the same methodology and mindset, but for whatever reasons those companies they bought didn't go anywhere. And we never hear about their stories. Having skills and great ideas are not enough. IMO you also need to be in the right place at the right time.
While it is good to study from some idols, but I always think that the more important questions are "Who are you? What do you have? What can you do with it? What are you going to do NOW - not what you could have done 10 years ago? How can you trade/invest better?" You can buy a few shares of BRK.A - and hope that after Buffett retires, the successor can keep up with the performance history (read Fidelity Magellan fund after Peter Lynch retired). Or you can give your own ideas a try.
Did you have $60k to set aside 30 some years ago? And if you did, would you have handed it over to one unknown (at the time) fund manager and trusted him with your entire saving? You know... Forrest Gump became a millionaire because he bought stocks in Apple after hearing about this fruit company...