Buffett ran Berkshire from 1970 through early 2026
Warren Buffett, born 30 August 1930 in Omaha to congressman Howard Buffett, learned value investing from Benjamin Graham before launching Buffett Partnership Ltd. in 1956. From 1970 to 2026 he chaired Berkshire Hathaway as its largest shareholder, turning a textile maker into a sprawling holding company and earning the nickname Oracle of Omaha.
At seven he borrowed a library book called One Thousand Ways to Make $1000, and he soon sold gum, Coca-Cola and magazines door to door. His father took him to the New York Stock Exchange at 10, and a year later the boy owned his first stock, a trio of Cities Service preferred shares. On his first tax return, in 1944, he deducted $35 for the bicycle and watch he used on his paper route. As a sophomore he and a friend put a $25 used pinball machine in a barber shop, grew to several machines, and sold the business in 1947 for $1,200. By 15 he earned over $175 a month delivering the Washington Post, and at 14 he had spent $1,200 on a 40-acre farm worked by a tenant.
His father pushed him into Wharton in 1947; he transferred to the University of Nebraska and graduated in 1951, then studied under Graham at Columbia after Harvard Business School rejected him. Learning that Graham sat on GEICO's board, he took a Saturday train to Washington and knocked until a janitor let him in, then talked insurance for hours with vice president Lorimer Davidson and bought his first GEICO shares. Back in Omaha he took a Dale Carnegie speaking course, taught a night class to students twice his age, and lost money on a Sinclair gas station.
Graham hired him in 1954 at $12,000 a year, insisting every purchase carry a wide margin of safety between price and intrinsic value. When Graham retired in 1956, Buffett had savings of more than $174,000 and started his own partnerships, six by 1959, the year he met Charlie Munger at a lunch at the Omaha Club. In 1961 he disclosed that 35 percent of partnership assets sat in the Sanborn Map Company, whose investments were worth more than its share price. He became a millionaire in 1962, merged everything into Buffett Partnership, and wound it up in 1969, handing partners Berkshire shares.
Berkshire paid its first and only dividend, 10 cents, in 1967. From 1973 it bought into the Washington Post Company, where Buffett befriended Katharine Graham, and in 1977 it acquired the Buffalo Evening News for $32.5 million. Munger became vice-chairman in 1978. Forbes estimated Buffett's fortune at $148.9 billion in January 2026.
Source: Warren Buffett
