Warren Buffett

The Early Years: Entrepreneurship Before Investing

1941 Age 11

First Stock Purchase

Bought 3 shares of Cities Service at $38/share. The stock fell to $27. He held. It recovered to $40. He sold — then watched it rise to $200. His first lesson: patience pays, and selling too soon is expensive.

Why it matters This single trade became the origin story Buffett retells most often — the cost of impatience stuck with him for the next eight decades of investing.
1943 Age 13

First Tax Return — Bicycle as a Business Expense

Earned $175 delivering newspapers for the Washington Post. Claimed a $35 deduction for his bicycle and watch. The entrepreneurial instinct — and attention to financial detail — were already fully formed.

Why it matters Treating a paper route like a real business, deductions and all, foreshadowed the meticulous capital allocator he'd become at Berkshire.
1949 Columbia Business School

Meets Benjamin Graham — His Intellectual Father

Read Graham's "The Intelligent Investor" and called it the best investing book ever written. Enrolled at Columbia specifically to study under Graham. The concept of intrinsic value — what a company is actually worth versus what the market says it is worth — shaped everything that followed.

Why it matters Every Buffett decision since traces back to this idea: price is what you pay, value is what you get, and the two often disagree.
1956 Age 25

Buffett Partnership, Ltd. — $100,100 to Start

Returned to Omaha and formed his first investment partnership with seven family members and friends, contributing $100 of his own money. By 1962, the partnerships had grown to nearly $7.2 million and he became a millionaire.

Why it matters He started with almost nothing of his own capital — the early returns came from skill in picking, not from starting wealth.
1965 The Berkshire Decision

Takes Control of a Failing Textile Mill

Acquired Berkshire Hathaway — an ailing New England textile manufacturer — at $14.86 per share when working capital was $19 per share. The textile business eventually closed in 1985. But Buffett had already repurposed it as the holding vehicle for the greatest investment portfolio in history.

Why it matters Buffett later called the Berkshire purchase his costliest mistake — yet the failing shell became the chassis for everything that followed.
1988 Coca-Cola

The Trade That Defined a Generation

Berkshire begins building its position in Coca-Cola. The shares Buffett bought for roughly $1 billion are now worth over $25 billion — not including the billions in dividends collected over 35 years of holding.

Why it matters This is the textbook case for buy-and-hold: a simple, understandable business held through every market cycle since the late 1980s.
2025–2026 Retirement

The Graceful Exit

Announced his retirement at the May 2025 annual meeting. Greg Abel became CEO on January 1, 2026. Buffett remains chairman. Berkshire Hathaway's market cap stands above $1 trillion.

Why it matters The handover was planned years in advance — a rare example of succession executed on the company's own terms, not forced by crisis.