Warren Buffett was born in Omaha (Nebraska) in 1930, in the middle of the United States. Having been interested in the stock market since the age of 16, Buffett has only pursued one profession over the past forty years: investing. Given the immense fortune thus accumulated, he undoubtedly deserves the place of honor in the pantheon of fund managers!
In 1956, Warren Buffett returned to his hometown, where he has lived ever since. He gradually takes control of a textile group listed on the stock exchange, Berkshire Hathaway. After turning it around, he used Berkshire as an investment vehicle: in 1967, he acquired a first insurance company, National Indemnity, then GEICO. Quickly, insurers will become the main providers of liquidity for the holding company that Berkshire Hathaway is becoming.
Virtually unchanged since the start of his career, his investment principles make Buffett a “good family man”. It is primarily interested in undervalued companies – listed or not – that are profitable and whose “niche” know-how makes them leaders in their respective markets. It doesn’t matter what their sector of activity is: Buffett is a financier, not an industrialist.
The success has never wavered: the value of Berkshire Hathaway’s assets increased on average by 21.1% per year between 1965 and 2007, twice as much as the American stock index S&P 500 over the same period. period. Today, the Berkshire Hathaway class ‘A’ share is the most expensive on the New York Stock Exchange: never divided, it was trading at around $123,000 as of October 21, limiting its decline since the start of the year at 13%, compared to -33% of the S&P 500. Not counting its unlisted holdings, Berkshire’s portfolio currently has less than forty stocks, mainly American.
According to the Forbes ranking of March 2011, Warren Buffett occupies the third place of richest man in the world behind Bill Gates and Carlos Slim, with a fortune estimated at 50 billion dollars.
In 2010, economic journalist and author Alice Schroeder wrote an unpublished biography of Warren Buffett, entitled The Snowball Effect. This comprehensive biography of the man known to all as the “Oracle of Omaha” was written with the cooperation of Buffett himself: he devoted thousands of hours and opened his files and address book to Alice Schroeder, allowing him to contact his wife, children, friends and associates. From all this came an in-depth analysis of his philosophy of life – probably the most comprehensive account we will ever have. This book details the principles and ideas that made Buffett’s incredible fortune, but also enriched the lives (and bank accounts) of those who adopted them. Finally, he tells the most fascinating American success story of our era.
This book was selected among the best books of 2010 by The Washington Post, People, The Financial Times, BusinessWeek, Publishers Weekly and the New York Times.
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