Warren Buffett on solving difficult problems

Warren Buffett on solving difficult problems:

"After 25 years of buying and supervising a great variety of businesses, Charlie and I have not learned how to solve difficult business problems. What we have learned is to avoid them. To the extent we have been successful, it is because we concentrated on identifying one-foot hurdles that we could step over rather than because we acquired any ability to clear seven-footers. The finding may seem unfair, but in both business and investments it is usually far more profitable to simply stick with the easy and obvious than it is to resolve the difficult. On occasion, tough problems must be tackled as was the case when we started our Sunday paper in Buffalo. In other instances, a great investment opportunity occurs when a marvelous business encounters a one-time huge, but solvable, problem as was the case many years back at both American Express and GEICO. Overall, however, we've done better by avoiding dragons than by slaying them."

Taleb & Warren Buffett

Being a fan of both Nassim Taleb and Warren Buffett I was pleasantly surprised when watching this interview.

I know Taleb has commented before that George Soros is a better investor than Warren Buffett. In my mind I thought the exact same thing mentioned by Jeff Matthews.

Link to video here:

http://youtu.be/PQsnrzSW6rA

By the way, Jeff Matthews has a good blog also:

http://jeffmatthewsisnotmakingthisup.blogspot.com.au/?m=1

Long tail of investing

Just finished the Long Tail by Chris Anderson and it got me thinking about how this applies to investing in general. Successful investors often will have to invest outside of mainstream 'hits' where the majority of regular investors and funds are active. By this account it would mean they are looking further down the tail of investment options. What are your thoughts? Would an investor like Warren Buffett or even John Paulson be known as 'mainstream' or 'long tail' investors?