From making a profit of $2 to building a $531.45 billion company.

The journey of Warren Buffet

A Thread

1/ Warren Edward Buffett was born on August 30, 1930, to his mother Leila and father Howard, a stockbroker-turned-Congressman.

2/ The first cent of Warren : At just 6 years old, Buffett purchased six-packs of Coca-Cola from his grandfather's grocery store for 25 cents and resold each of the bottles for a nickel, pocketing a 5% profit.

3/ At 11 years old, he purchased 3 shares of an oil company called Cities Service at $38 per share for both himself and his older sister, Doris. Unfortunately, the stock valued at $27 within just a few weeks of Buffett purchasing it.

4/ Warren sold his shares at $40, making a profit of $2 per share. A mistake he would soon come to regret, as Cities Service shot upto $200. The experience taught him one of the basic lessons of investing : Patience is a virtue.

5/ By the age of 13, Buffett was running his own businesses as a paperboy and selling his own horse racing tip sheet. In 1944, he filed his first tax return, in which his income was $592.50 and he paid a $7 tax.

6/ Buffett enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton business school at the age of 16. Buffett only stayed for 2 years, as he started complaining that “He knew more than his professors.”

7/ Later, Warren returned to his hometown, Omaha and transferred to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

8/ During his high school tenure, he and a friend Don Danley, purchased a used pinball machine for $25. They installed it in a barbershop, and within a few months, the profits enabled them to buy other machines.

9/ Later, they owned machines in 3 different locations before they sold the business for $1,200 to a war veteran.

10/ Warren Buffet made nearly $10,000 from his childhood businesses and saved about $5,000 in savings (the equivalent of about $53,000 today) before he turned 20 and graduated from the University of Nebraska in 1950.

11/ Buffett then attended the Columbia Business School in New York (after rejected by Harvard Business School) to work toward a Master’s degree in Economics and to study under famed investor Benjamin Graham, who taught Buffet, the strategy of value investing.

12/ Buffett worked from 1951 to 1954 at Buffett-Falk & Co. as an investment salesman.

13/ In 1952, Warren Buffet got married with Susan Thompson at Dundee Presbyterian Church.

14/ Then, Warren worked at Graham-Newman Corporation as a securities analyst from 1954 to 1956.

15/ After working for the investment firm of his mentor, Graham, for two years in New York, Buffett returned to Omaha and started his own investment company, called Buffett Partnership in 1956.

16/ Buffett started the company with $100 of his own money and roughly $105,000 in total from seven investing partners who included his sister, Doris, and his Aunt Alice, as well as his father-in-law.

17/ In 1958, Warren purchased a five-bedroom stucco house in Omaha, where he still lives which cost him $31,500. He calls it the "third-best investment he's ever made."

18/ Buffett continued forming additional partnerships with investors throughout the early 1960s by utilizing the techniques learned from Benjamin Graham. By 1962, he’s grown his investors’ assets to a total of $7.2 million, with his own stake worth over $1 million.

19/ One such enterprise Buffett valued was a textile company named Berkshire Hathaway. He began accumulating stock in the early 1960s. He began buying shares in Berkshire from Seabury Stanton, the owner, whom he later fired.

20/ In 1964, Stanton (owner of Berkshire Hathaway) made an oral tender offer to buyback Buffett's stake in the company for $11.5 per share. Buffett agreed to the deal. A few weeks later, Warren Buffett received the tender offer in writing, but the tender offer was for only $11.04

21/ The offer made Warren angry, instead of selling at the slightly lower price, Buffett decided to buy more of the stock to take control of the company and fire Stanton, which Buffet did.

22/ In 1965, Buffett's partnerships began purchasing Berkshire Hathaway at $7.60 per share and later, took full control of Berkshire Hathaway and Buffett named a new president of the company.

23/ Despite the success of the Buffett Partnership, Warren dissolved the firm in 1969 to focus on the development of Berkshire Hathaway and Buffet titled himself as the chairman for Berkshire Hathaway.

24/ Buffett initially maintained Berkshire's core business of textiles, but by 1967, he was expanding into the insurance industry and other investments. Berkshire first ventured into the insurance business with the purchase of National Indemnity Company.

25/ In the late 1970s, Berkshire acquired an equity stake in the Government Employees Insurance Company (GEICO), which forms the core of its insurance operations today (and is a major source of capital for Berkshire Hathaway's other investments).

26/ In 1978, Charlie Munger joined Berkshire Hathaway as a vice-chairman. They both grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, and both worked at Buffett’s grandfather’s grocery store, but they didn’t know each other until Munger was 35 and Buffett was 29, according to Buffett.

27/ In 1983, Berkshire Hathaway’s stock hit a $1,000 per share milestone after Buffett spent the 1970s making a string of successful investments in stocks such as the Washington Post Company, GEICO, ABC Broadcasting and RJ Reynolds.

28/ A year earlier, Buffett appeared in the debut issue of the Forbes 400, with an estimated net worth of $250 million.

29/ In 1985, Forbes estimated Buffett’s net worth at $1 billion and Warren shut down the last textile operations (Hathaway's historic core).

30/ In 1988, Buffett began buying The Coca-Cola Company stock, eventually purchasing up to 7% of the company for $1.02 billion. It would turn out to be one of Berkshire's most lucrative investments, and one which it still holds.

31/ In July 2004, Warren’s wife, Susan Thompson died after a battle with cancer. Warren and Susan had three children: Susan, Howard and Peter.

32/ In 2006, Warren got married with his second wife, Astrid Menks on his 76th birthday. Buffett's second wife and first wife were friends.

33/ By 2006, Buffett had grown Berkshire Hathaway into a behemoth with stock worth over $100,000 per share, while the investor’s own net worth had grown exponentially to top $40 billion.

34/ That same year, Buffett first pledged to gradually give away 85% of his fortune over the remainder of his life to charity, primarily to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

35/ In 2010, Buffett and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates launched the Giving Pledge campaign and began recruiting fellow billionaires to pledge to give at least half of their net worth to philanthropic causes.

36/ On February 16, 2011, Buffett was awarded the highest civilian honor, the “Presidential Medal of Freedom,” by former President Barack Obama. Due to his philanthropic donations - since 2014, Buffett has donated more than $2 billion to charitable foundations.

37/ In 2012 Buffett disclosed that he had been diagnosed with Stage 1 of prostate cancer. He began undergoing radiation treatment in July, and successfully completed his treatment in November.

38/ Each year, Buffett presides over Berkshire Hathaway's annual shareholder meeting in the Qwest Center in Omaha, Nebraska, an event drawing over 20,000 visitors from both the United States and abroad, giving it the nickname "Woodstock of Capitalism".

39/ By the end of 2013, Buffett had a net worth of $59 billion, up from $46 billion at the beginning of the year. On average, Buffett made $37 million a day in 2013, which was fueled by rising stock prices.

40/ In 2016 Buffett launched Drive2Vote, a website aimed at encouraging people in his Nebraska community to exercise their right to vote, as well as to assist in registering and driving voters to a polling location if they needed a ride.

41/ In May 2017, Buffett revealed that he had begun selling some of the approximately 81 million shares, he owned in IBM stock, noting that he did not value the company as highly as he did six years earlier.

42/ Following another sale in the third quarter, his stake in the company dropped to about 37 million shares.

43/ On the flip side, Warren increased his investment in Apple by 3% and became Bank of America's largest shareholder by exercising warrants for 700 million shares.

44/ In 2018, he added more Apple shares to make it Berkshire Hathaway's largest common stock investment.

45/ Berkshire's annual reports and letters to shareholders, prepared by Warren Buffett, frequently receive coverage by the financial media.

46/ Buffett's writings are known for containing quotations from sources as varied as the Bible and Mae West, as well as advice in a folksy, Midwestern style and numerous jokes.

47/ Despite donating roughly $37 billion to charity since 2006, Buffett’s net worth continues to swell overall, topping $81 billion today to make him the world’s sixth-wealthiest person, according to Bloomberg.

48/ Meanwhile, Berkshire Hathaway’s stock is currently valued above ₹2.5 crore per share with a market value over $531.45 billion.

Sources : https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ApenUt3LZQJmvJAeak5gSKBwjotOB5pd2acZZCT3UZo/edit?usp=sharing

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