$130B+ Net Worth · 60+ Year Career · 1 Cherry Coke
Born August 30, 1930 · Omaha, Nebraska
He bought his first stock at eleven. He filed his first tax return at thirteen, claiming a $35 deduction for his bicycle. Ninety years later, he's the most successful investor who ever lived — and he still eats at McDonald's.
Six acts. Nine decades. One philosophy: buy wonderful businesses at fair prices, and never sell.
A kid from Omaha who read every book in the library's finance section by age eleven.
Born during the Great Depression to Howard Buffett, a stockbroker-turned-congressman, and Leila Stahl. Warren was obsessed with numbers from birth. He memorized city populations, calculated odds on horse races, and ran six paper routes simultaneously. At age 11, he bought three shares of Cities Service Preferred at $38. They dropped to $27. He held until $40 and sold — then watched them climb to $200. The most important investment lesson of his life, learned at eleven: patience pays. He studied under Benjamin Graham at Columbia, learning the gospel of value investing that would become his religion.
He started with $105,000 from seven partners. He gave them a 29.5% annual return.
At twenty-five, Buffett returned to Omaha and started Buffett Partnership, Ltd. with $105,100 — $100 of his own money and the rest from family and friends. Over thirteen years, he never had a losing year. His compound annual return was 29.5% versus 7.4% for the Dow. He found undervalued companies the market ignored, bought controlling stakes, and waited. American Express after the Salad Oil Scandal. Disney when it was trading below the value of its film library. By 1969, the partnership was worth $104 million. He dissolved it — telling partners the market was too expensive to find bargains.
He turned a dying textile company into a conglomerate that bought everything from candy to newspapers to insurance.
Buffett transformed Berkshire from a worthless textile mill into an investment machine powered by insurance float — collecting premiums today to invest for decades. He bought See's Candies in 1972 for $25 million, and it generated over $2 billion in pre-tax earnings. He bought GEICO, Nebraska Furniture Mart, the Buffalo News. Each acquisition taught the same lesson: buy businesses with durable competitive advantages run by honest people, and leave them alone. By 1990, Berkshire shares traded above $7,000.
The dot-com bubble came and went. Buffett didn't buy a single tech stock. Everyone called him a dinosaur. Then the bubble burst.
The 1990s were Buffett's vindication decade. He refused to buy tech stocks during the dot-com mania, and the financial press wrote him off. "Buffett has lost his touch." Berkshire shares dropped 50% from 1998 to 2000. Then the NASDAQ crashed 78%. Buffett was right — he just wasn't early. He bought Dairy Queen, General Re, and made Coca-Cola one of his largest positions. The Berkshire annual meeting in Omaha became "Woodstock for Capitalists" — 40,000 shareholders making a pilgrimage to hear a man in a cheap suit explain compound interest.
The financial system collapsed. Buffett wrote the check.
When Lehman Brothers fell and the world panicked, Buffett invested $5 billion in Goldman Sachs and $3 billion in General Electric — at terms only he could command. His op-ed "Buy American. I Am." ran in the New York Times while the market was in free fall. He was right again. He bought Apple starting in 2016, building a $170 billion position that became the single greatest stock investment in history. At 94, he still runs Berkshire. He still drives the same car. He still reads 500 pages a day. The Oracle shows no signs of stopping.
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