Warren Buffett
Businessman and investor. Born
Warren Edward Buffett on August 30, 1930, in Omaha, Nebraska. Buffett's father,
Howard, worked as stockbroker and served as a U.S. congressman. His mother,
Leila Stahl Buffett, was a homemaker. Buffett was the second of three children
and the only boy.
Buffett demonstrated a knack for
financial and business matters early in his childhood. Friends and
acquaintances have said the young boy was a mathematical prodigy who could add
large columns of numbers in his head, a talent he occasionally demonstrated in
his later years.
Warren often visited his father's
stockbrokerage shop as a child, and chalked in the stock prices on the
blackboard in the office. At 11 years old he made his first investment, buying
three shares of Cities Service Preferred at $38 per share. The stock quickly
dropped to only $27, but Buffett held on tenaciously until they reached $40. He
sold his shares at a small profit, but regretted the decision when Cities
Service shot up to nearly $200 a
share. He later cited this experience as an early lesson in patience in
investing.
By the age of 13, Buffett was
running his own businesses as a paperboy and selling his own horseracing tip
sheet. That same year, he filed his first tax return, claiming his bike as a
$35 tax deduction.
In 1942, Buffett's father was
elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, and his family moved to Fredricks
burg, Virginia, to be closer to the congressman's new post. Buffett attended
Woodrow Wilson High School in Washington, D.C., where he continued plotting new
ways to make money. During his high
school tenure, he and a friend 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. Buffett owned machines in three different locations
before he sold the business for $1,200.
Buffett enrolled at the University
of Pennsylvania at the age of 16 to study business. He stayed two years, moved
to the University of Nebraska to finish up his degree, and emerged from college
at age 20 with nearly $10,000 from his childhood businesses.
Influenced by Benjamin Graham's 1949
book, The Intelligent Investor, Buffett enrolled at Columbia
Business School to study under the acclaimed economist and investor. After
earning his master's degree in 1951, he sold securities for Buffett-Falk &
Company for three years, then worked for his mentor for two years as an analyst
at Graham-Newman Corp.
In 1956, Buffet formed the firm
Buffett Partnership Ltd. in his hometown of Omaha. Utilizing the techniques
learned from Graham, he was successful in identifying undervauled
companies and became a millionaire. One such enterprise Buffett valued was a
textile company named Berkshire Hathaway. He began accumulating stock in
the early 1960s, and by 1965 he had assumed control of the company.
2. The
tenses used in Article are simple past tense. There are worked, served,
demonstrated, visited, chalked, made, dropped, held, reached, elected, moved,
continued, purchased, installed, enabled.
3. The
article used infinitive. “Buffett was running his own businesses as a paperboy. “ change
to “Buffett
was to run his own businesses as a
paperboy”
4. The
article used possessive pronoun. There are “Buffett was running his own
businesses as a paperboy and selling his own horseracing tip sheet.”, “he made
his first investment, buying three shares of Cities Service Preferred at $38
per share.”
