49 Fun Facts About Warren Buffett

Buffett's famous nickname calls him the what of Omaha?

Oracle: the name stuck because investors hang on his every pronouncement, even though he ran his empire from a modest office in his Nebraska hometown, far from Wall Street.

Buffett wrote that you only learn who has been swimming naked when what happens?

The tide goes out: he wrote it in his 2001 letter to shareholders, warning that an insurer's shaky partners look fine in calm years and are exposed only when a catastrophe arrives.

Which elected office did Buffett's father, Howard, hold for four terms in the 1940s and 1950s?

US congressman: the 1942 win moved the family to Washington, where 12-year-old Warren was displaced and unhappy, and he was glad when his father later lost a race and they went home to Omaha.

What did Buffett's high-school yearbook say about him?

'Likes math; a future stockbroker' ran under his 1947 senior photo at Woodrow Wilson High in Washington, and it came true within four years: by 1951 he was selling securities at his father's Omaha firm.

What did the teenage Buffett and a friend install in barber shops to make money?

Pinball machines: they bought a used one for $25 and put it in a barber shop, and within months the profits had paid for machines in three shops. They later sold the business for $1,200.

What happened to Buffett's first stock, bought at age 11, after he sold it for a small profit?

Soared to about $200: he had bought Cities Service at $38, watched it sink to $27 and sold at $40, and he later called the episode an early lesson in patience.

What did Buffett buy at 14 with $1,200 of his savings?

A 40-acre farm: he paid with savings from his paper routes and leased the land to a tenant farmer, which made him a landlord while he was still in high school.

Which university rejected Buffett's MBA application in 1950, sending him to Columbia instead?

Harvard's rejection proved lucky: Buffett then discovered that two of his investing idols taught at Columbia, wrote to them and was accepted.

Which 'father of value investing' taught Buffett at Columbia and later employed him?

Benjamin Graham wrote The Intelligent Investor, the book that made Buffett seek him out; Buffett later called him his hero and named his first son Howard Graham Buffett.

Which insurer's Washington HQ did the young Buffett talk his way into on a Saturday in 1951?

GEICO: a custodian let him in, and the one executive at work that Saturday spent about four hours teaching him the insurance business. Berkshire went on to buy the whole company.

What did Buffett sign up for to overcome his fear of public speaking?

A Dale Carnegie course: Buffett says he was once too terrified to give his own name to a crowd, so at 21 he paid $100 for the course, and he kept its certificate on his office wall decades later.

Which lawyer, introduced to Buffett in 1959, became his closest partner and Berkshire's vice-chairman?

Charlie Munger was born and raised in Omaha, as Buffett was, yet the two first met only in 1959, when Munger was 35. He gave up the law and was Berkshire's vice-chairman from 1978 until his death in 2023.

In his 2002 letter to shareholders, what did Buffett call 'financial weapons of mass destruction'?

Derivatives: Buffett spoke from experience, having spent a year winding down a derivatives dealer that came with an insurer he had bought, a business he likened to hell, easy to enter and almost impossible to exit.

How did Buffett make his first million dollars, which he had by 1962?

Running investment partnerships: he began in 1956 with $105,000 from seven relatives and friends, only $100 of it his own, and took a share of the profits he made for them.

What line of business was Berkshire Hathaway in when Buffett began buying its shares?

Textile manufacturing: Buffett later called Berkshire the dumbest stock he ever bought, because its New England mills kept losing ground, and he shut the last of them in 1985.

At about what price per share did Buffett first buy Berkshire Hathaway stock?

$7.50 a share, in December 1962: Buffett likened it to picking up a discarded cigar butt with one puff left. The original shares were never split, and by August 2014 a single one cost $200,000.

In 1983 Buffett bought which kind of Omaha store from Rose Blumkin, who had founded it with $500?

A furniture store: 'Mrs B' had talked her way out of Russia at 23 with no schooling, built the business from scratch, and was still hard at work at the age of 102.

Which newspaper publisher did Berkshire start buying into in 1973?

The Washington Post Company: Berkshire's $10.6 million stake had lost a quarter of its value by the end of 1974, but Buffett held on while its chief executive bought back cheap stock, and the stake grew more than twentyfold.

Which daily paper did Berkshire buy in 1977 for $32.5 million, prompting an antitrust fight with a rival?

Buffalo Evening News: Berkshire launched a Sunday edition to take on the rival Courier-Express, which sued, and both papers lost money until the Courier-Express folded in 1982.

Buffett put up more than $500 million in 1985 to help Capital Cities buy which TV network, four times its size?

ABC: the buyer was so much smaller that the deal was likened to a minnow swallowing a whale, and a decade later Disney bought the merged company.

Which Wall Street firm did Buffett step in to chair after a 1991 Treasury bidding scandal?

Salomon was on the brink when its largest shareholder stepped in: Buffett served a brief stint as interim chairman and is credited with rebuilding the firm's reputation.

Which company did Buffett start buying in 1988, eventually owning about 7 percent for $1.02 billion?

Coca-Cola: as a boy in 1936 he bought Cokes six for 25 cents and sold them for a nickel each, and he joked that it then took him half a century to get round to buying the shares.

What did Buffett name the private jet he bought with Berkshire funds in 1989?

'The Indefensible' was Buffett's joke against himself: he had just swapped an $850,000 used jet for a $6.7 million one, and his partner's suggestion for the name was 'The Aberration'.

Buffett's first principle of investing is not to lose money; what is the second?

'Never forget rule number 1': Buffett says he learned both rules from the Columbia teacher who shaped his investing, and they put protecting capital ahead of chasing gains.

Buffett wrote that if you won't own a stock for ten years, you shouldn't own it for how long?

Ten minutes: the line is from his 1996 letter, which goes on to say that a portfolio of companies whose earnings march upward over the years will see its market value follow.

In a famous ten-year charity bet begun in 2008, Buffett backed what to beat Wall Street's hand-picked money managers?

An S&P 500 index fund gained 125.8 percent over the decade, far ahead of all five baskets of hedge funds chosen by his opponents, and the winnings went to Girls Inc. of Omaha.

What headline did Buffett put on his New York Times opinion piece during the 2008 financial crisis?

'Buy American. I am.' ran in October 2008 as markets plunged: Buffett wrote that he was moving his personal account from government bonds into US stocks, on his rule to be greedy when others are fearful.

Whom did Buffett dethrone in 2008 to become the world's richest person on the Forbes list?

Bill Gates had topped the Forbes list for 13 straight years before his friend edged past him on the back of Berkshire's surging share price. Gates took the title back in 2009.

Which railroad did Buffett buy for $34 billion in cash and stock in 2009?

Burlington Northern Santa Fe was the biggest purchase in Berkshire's history to that point, and Buffett called it an all-in wager on the economic future of the United States.

Which technology company did Buffett, a longtime tech sceptic, surprise investors by buying into in 2011?

IBM: Buffett had long said he would not buy technology he did not fully understand, so the stake stunned investors. Six years later he began selling, saying he no longer valued the company as highly.

Whom did Buffett ask the board to appoint as his successor as Berkshire CEO, effective January 1, 2026?

Greg Abel, the Canadian-born head of Berkshire's energy business, took over as CEO. Buffett stayed on as chairman until September 2026, when his son Howard succeeded him.

Which musical instrument did Buffett take up in 1949 to compete with a girl's boyfriend?

Ukulele: the girl still chose the other boy, but Buffett kept playing, and a year later it helped him court Susan Thompson, whose mandolin-playing father he would visit with it.

How much did Buffett pay in 1958 for the Omaha house he was still living in six decades later?

$31,500: Buffett called the house the third-best investment he ever made, after two wedding rings, though he admitted he would have made far more by renting and putting the money into stocks.

Which card game was Buffett playing about 12 hours a week in 2008, often with a fellow billionaire?

Bridge: a self-confessed addict, Buffett has played remotely several times a week with a champion partner, and once said he would not mind jail if he had the right three cell mates.

What was Buffett's base salary as Berkshire's CEO in 2008?

$100,000: in the very year Forbes ranked him the richest person in the world, Buffett took no bonus, no stock and no options, and his total pay came to $175,000.

What did Buffett call Berkshire Hathaway's annual shareholder meeting in Omaha?

Woodstock for Capitalists was Buffett's own name for the weekend, when crowds of shareholders filled an Omaha arena to hear him and his partner answer their questions for hours.

What did a DNA test show about 'Uncle Warren' Buffett and 'Cousin Jimmy' Buffett?

They were not related: the 23andMe test came back negative, but the two friends went on calling each other 'Uncle Warren' and 'Cousin Jimmy', and Warren advised the singer on his Margaritaville business.

Which fast-food chain did Berkshire Hathaway buy outright in 1998?

Dairy Queen: announcing the deal, Buffett told shareholders he brought some product expertise to it, having long been a regular at the chain's outlets in Omaha.

What did Buffett call bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in 2018?

'Rat poison squared' was his verdict at the 2018 shareholder meeting. Months earlier he had said cryptocurrencies would come to a bad ending, yet added that he would never bet a dime against them.

To which charity did Buffett pledge the bulk of his fortune in 2006, then the largest gift in US history?

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation was to receive its shares in yearly instalments, not all at once, with smaller gifts going to four foundations run by Buffett's own family.

What campaign did Buffett found with Bill and Melinda Gates in 2010 asking billionaires to give away half their wealth?

The Giving Pledge asks the very rich to promise at least half their wealth to good causes. Buffett went much further, pledging more than 99 percent of his own.

At which New York steakhouse did winners of Buffett's charity lunch auction traditionally dine with him?

Smith & Wollensky hosted the winners. Buffett backed the auctions because his first wife, Susan, had introduced him to Glide, a San Francisco charity for the homeless, and one lunch fetched $3.46 million.

Buffett wants his children to have 'enough to do anything, but not so much that they would feel like...' what?

'Doing nothing' was the danger he saw in a huge inheritance, and he acted on it: nearly all his fortune is pledged to philanthropy, much of it through foundations his three children run.

Buffett compared repealing the inheritance tax to choosing the Olympic team how?

Picking past champions' eldest sons was his image for inherited fortunes: Buffett argued that scrapping the tax would create an aristocracy of wealth in place of a meritocracy.

Which president awarded Buffett the Presidential Medal of Freedom?

Barack Obama gave him the medal in 2011, and went on to name a tax proposal the Buffett Rule, after Buffett's complaint that he paid a lower tax rate than his own secretary.

What was the title of HBO's 2017 documentary about Buffett?

Becoming Warren Buffett shows him choosing one of three McDonald's breakfasts on his drive to work, the cheapest when he feels less prosperous; none costs more than $3.17.

At which business school did Buffett spend two years from 1947 before finishing his degree elsewhere?

Wharton failed to hold him: he had lost interest in academics, felt he knew more about business than his professors, and went home to finish his degree in his own state.

At the height of the 2008 financial crisis, Buffett put billions into which Wall Street bank?

Goldman Sachs paid well for the vote of confidence: Berkshire's preferred stock carried a high yield and the right to buy Goldman shares, and Buffett was in no hurry to let the bank buy it back in 2011.

Which chocolate maker, bought in 1972 for $25 million, did Buffett call the prototype of a dream business?

See's Candies had earned Berkshire $1.35 billion before tax by 2007, yet Buffett almost blew the deal: the seller wanted $30 million and he refused to go a dollar above $25 million.