Warren Buffett is the greatest and most famous investor of recent times. The rules of doing business formulated by him have become a kind of Bible of the securities market. New York brokers have a sign: if you whisper quotes from his books to yourself while playing on the stock exchange, you will definitely be lucky. Some believe his truism, others believe that he is simply lucky. March 3, 2011, Forbes magazine, in its ranking of the richest people in the world, ranked Warren Buffett with $ 50 billion in third place.
Buffett’s childhood and student life
Warren Buffett was born in the USA (Omaha) in August 1930 into a poor family. For the first time the makings of a businessman, Warren showed at the age of 6. He bought several cans of soda water from the store and then sold them to his family for double the price. At the age of 11, the boy and his sister bought shares in Cities Service Preferred. Warren received $ 5 on the sale of shares. At the age of 13, the boy started to work. He delivered newspapers. This activity earned him an income equal to the salary of a post office director! This is because Warren developed a special route that allowed him to bypass a large number of mailboxes. All this time, the boy was saving money, and at the age of 14, he had 1.5 thousand dollars. With this money, Warren bought a plot of land and rented it out.
Then he began to deal with slot machines, buying them in a broken state and giving them for repair. Newly functioning machines were installed in demanded premises, which earned Warren about $ 600 a month.
When Warren graduated from high school, his parents sent him to study at the University of Pennsylvania. The young aspiring entrepreneur was not interested in studying, so he left it a year later and went to his place in Omaha. He again took up newspapers as a co-owner of the office. It brought in pretty good money, but Warren realized that you can’t just make money, you need to get an education. He graduated from the same University in Pennsylvania and went to Columbia University in Washington.
Warren attended lectures with renowned investment entrepreneur Benjamin Graham. It was from him that Warren learned how to deal with securities. Warren was the only one in the group who was able to get high marks from Graham. After graduating from university, Buffett returned to his home and began working as a teacher at the University of Omaha. But a miracle happened. Warren received a call from Graham and took him to work at his firm, where the aspiring entrepreneur earned $ 140,000, and when he returned home, he spent it on opening his investment organization – Buffett Associates partnership with a start-up capital of $ 105,000.
Incredible success
Warren’s company invested money only in those firms that are developing steadily and will exist on the market for many years to come. Thanks to this strategy, Buffett’s stock is up 251% in five years! And five years later, the shares rose another 905%, and the value of the organization itself was $ 102 million. But Buffett decided to sell his investment business and buy Berkshire Hathaway, a textile company. And then Warren bought the 5 largest insurance firms in the United States. But he did not stop there either, continuing to buy shares of other enterprises. At forty, Buffett’s fortune was estimated at $ 28 billion!
Today, Warren Buffett is a world-famous financial guru who owns shares in American Express, Walt Disney, Gillette, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, and others, and who, in one word, can destroy companies or, conversely, increase their value.
