Don’t be fooled by the benign, grandfatherly appearance of Warren Buffett.
His dishevelled white locks and frugal habits belie the savviest mind in the investing world. Affectionately called ‘The Oracle of Omaha’, this native mid-westerner’s unique, maverick instincts, have, over 60 years, helped him to amass a fortune of $46bn solely from investments.
Buffett’s investment company, Berkshire Hathaway, of which he is still chairman, has more than $2bn in stock market holdings. This is thanks to Buffett’s strategy of investing in undervalued companies with low overhead costs and high growth potential.
Price is what you pay. Value is what you get
Warren Buffett
Consistently ignoring Wall Street trends, he made one particularly smart move in buying up American Express stock in 1963, just as a scandal threatened to finish it. Buffett noticed that people were still using their cards to shop and held firm – to his great profit. He also bought into Coca-Cola Co. when it was still small-fry on Wall Street, recognising two perfect ingredients – the world’s strongest brand name and untapped sales potential overseas.
As an entrepreneurial teenager, Buffett bought his first stock with savings from his two paper rounds. After investing money for friends in Omaha and continually beating the Dow Jones Average by huge margins, he eventually set up his own company, Berkshire Hathaway, named after a textile mill he bought into in 1962.
Whilst most billionaires are abhorred as much as admired, Buffett has earned the status of folk-legend. Famous for quoting Mae West and Yogi Berra in his annual reports and enjoying only burgers or steaks washed down with a coke, Buffett still lives in Omaha, in the house he bought 40 years ago, despite being ranked the second richest person in the world.
Recently Buffett did something that eclipsed any of the deals he did on the stock market. By donating $40bn – a staggering 85% of his personal fortune – to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation he made the biggest philanthropic donation of all time and set a shining example to all other rich folk. Yet Larry Ellison might think “well, it’s all very well for the Warren Buffett’s of this world to give away $40bn, but I’ve only got $19.5bn.”
