WARREN BUFFET WAS BORN TO EXCELL IN THE FINANCIAL WORLD

He was born in the midwest and from his earliest memory he remembers being able to do mathematical computations in his head for his stockbroker father, Howard. At the age of 11 he was working for his father’s brokerage. There he made his first stock purchase, Cities Service, and made a small profit. However it was this event that taught Warren not to sell too soon. He made about $1.75 a share in is first deal, and if he had held the stock he would have made almost 200 times that profit. He was never to forget that incredible revelation of long- term holdings.

He went to many of the finest universities over the next decades, and graduated with a Masters from Columbia in 1951. Buffet’s first investment partnership was Buffet Associates Ltd. in 1956, and in this company he honed his future management and investment strategies. He first looked for undervalued securities that possessed the margin of safety. Second he sought out arbitrages or company events that were not related to broader market changes. Third, he would build sizable holdings in companies and ally himself with other shareholders or employ proxies to affect changes in the companies.

Warren Buffet today has amassed an enormous fortune managed through the holding company, Berkshire Hathaway, in which he is the largest shareholder. His personal net worth is above $50 Billion and he is considered the 2nd or 3rd richest man in America. He is always full of surprises and in the past year he has given away most of his fortune to the other largest foundation, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Together they have formed the largest foundation assets in the history of the world, and they are pledged to enter into projects in Africa and many other continents where there is an urgent need to solve social problems.

Another surprise about this remarkable man is that he and his wife continue to live in the original house they owned in Omaha Nebraska all those many years ago. Incidentally the house is today valued at around $700,000.