About Warren Buffet
On August 30, 2009, Warren Buffett will celebrate his 79th birthday after becoming one of the most productive businessmen, shrewd investors and philanthropists the United States has ever had. Early in 2008, Forbes Magazine ranked him the world's wealthiest person with a net worth exceeding $62 billion. Two years before, he announced his intention to give the majority of his fortune to charity, the vast majority of which was to be distributed to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
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History
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Warren Buffett was the son of a local politician. Like so many, he took his first job as a newspaper delivery boy. He received his undergraduate degree from the Wharton School at University of Pennsylvania. He then attended graduate school at Columbia University after being turned down by Harvard University, and he was under the watchful eyes of Benjamin Graham and David Dodd, two well-known security analysts. Buffett took over Berkshire Hathaway, a textile company, in 1965. Today, among its vast holdings are familiar names such as Geico, Dairy Queen and See's Candies. It also owns major stakes in Coca-Cola Co., Anheuser-Busch and Wells Fargo Bank.
Significance
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For all the money he has amassed, Warren Buffett lives a very frugal life. For example, he still lives in the Omaha home he purchased in 1958 for $31,500. Last year, he took a salary from Berkshire Hathaway of $100,000 when other executives earned far more. In 1989, because of his significant travel, he spent almost $9 million on a jet plane after railing for years about other executives doing the same. He calls it "the indefensible."
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Size
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If you had begun purchasing Berkshire Hathaway's stock--like Warren Buffett did in the 1960's for about $8 per share--your stock would be worth at least 10,000 times what it would have then. For example, a $100 investment then would be worth about $1,000,000 today.
Advice
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At the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting in 2008 attended by over 31,000 people, Buffett shared some of elements he looks for in investing. First, he looks for companies that have a lot of cash and very little debt. In addition, he said he would prefer that he would rather invest in a good company with mediocre management, than the other way as is held on Wall Street today. Finally, he said that there is nothing more important than for a company to have good oral and written communication. Falling short of that in his early years, he took a Dale Carnegie course to deal with this problem.
Future
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Warren Buffett has withstood both good and bad times during his long lifetime as an investor, but he has never wavered from his faith in the future of the United States. Recently, he made the following comments on CNBC, "You know, five years from now, ten years from now, we'll look back on this period and we'll see that you could have made some extraordinary (stock market) buys. That doesn't mean it won't get more extraordinary a week or a month from now. I have no idea what the stock market is going to do next month or six months from now. I do know that the American economy, over a period of time, will do very well, and people who own a piece of it will do well."
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