Warren Buffett Trivia
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49 free Warren Buffett trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This Warren Buffett trivia quiz covers the Oracle of Omaha from a paper route and pinball machines in wartime Washington, through Ben Graham's classroom at Columbia and a Saturday knock on GEICO's door, to the partnerships that made him a millionaire at 32, the textile mill he calls his worst trade, the Coca-Cola stake, the Salomon rescue, the 2008 crisis deals and the pledge to give away 99 percent of everything. The easy questions are ones most people know: his nickname, his company, his home town. The medium ones ask about his mentors and partners, his famous rules, his frugal habits and the annual meeting known as the Woodstock of Capitalism. The hard ones dig into Sanborn Map, the $7.60 share price, the Buffalo Evening News, the private jet he called The Indefensible, the hedge-fund bet and the ukulele he bought to impress a girl. It suits a business-school warm-up, a finance-team quiz night or anyone who reads the shareholder letters every February. Every answer has been checked against a reference encyclopaedia, and each question shows its explanation and citation once you have answered.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Buffett's famous nickname calls him the what of Omaha?
Oracle
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.
Q 02Buffett wrote that you only learn who has been swimming naked when what happens?
The tide goes out
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.
Q 03Which elected office did Buffett's father, Howard, hold for four terms in the 1940s and 1950s?
US congressman
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.
Q 04What did Buffett's high-school yearbook say about him?
'Likes math; a future stockbroker'
'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.
Q 05What did the teenage Buffett and a friend install in barber shops to make money?
Pinball machines
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.
Q 06What happened to Buffett's first stock, bought at age 11, after he sold it for a small profit?
Soared to about $200
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.
Q 07What did Buffett buy at 14 with $1,200 of his savings?
A 40-acre farm
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.
Q 08Which university rejected Buffett's MBA application in 1950, sending him to Columbia instead?
Harvard
Harvard's rejection proved lucky: Buffett then discovered that two of his investing idols taught at Columbia, wrote to them and was accepted.
Q 09Which 'father of value investing' taught Buffett at Columbia and later employed him?
Benjamin Graham
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.
Q 10Which insurer's Washington HQ did the young Buffett talk his way into on a Saturday in 1951?
GEICO
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.
Q 11What did Buffett sign up for to overcome his fear of public speaking?
A Dale Carnegie course
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.
Q 12Which lawyer, introduced to Buffett in 1959, became his closest partner and Berkshire's vice-chairman?
Charlie Munger
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.
Q 13In his 2002 letter to shareholders, what did Buffett call 'financial weapons of mass destruction'?
Q 21Which Wall Street firm did Buffett step in to chair after a 1991 Treasury bidding scandal?
Salomon
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.
Q 22Which company did Buffett start buying in 1988, eventually owning about 7 percent for $1.02 billion?
Coca-Cola
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.
Q 23What did Buffett name the private jet he bought with Berkshire funds in 1989?
The Indefensible
Derivatives
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.
Q 14How did Buffett make his first million dollars, which he had by 1962?
Running investment partnerships
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.
Q 15What line of business was Berkshire Hathaway in when Buffett began buying its shares?
Textile manufacturing
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.
Q 16At about what price per share did Buffett first buy Berkshire Hathaway stock?
$7.50
$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.
Q 17In 1983 Buffett bought which kind of Omaha store from Rose Blumkin, who had founded it with $500?
A furniture store
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.
Q 18Which newspaper publisher did Berkshire start buying into in 1973?
The Washington Post Company
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.
Q 19Which daily paper did Berkshire buy in 1977 for $32.5 million, prompting an antitrust fight with a rival?
Buffalo Evening News
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.
Q 20Buffett put up more than $500 million in 1985 to help Capital Cities buy which TV network, four times its size?
ABC
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.
'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'.
Q 24Buffett's first principle of investing is not to lose money; what is the second?
'Never forget rule number 1'
'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.
Q 25Buffett wrote that if you won't own a stock for ten years, you shouldn't own it for how long?
Ten minutes
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.
Q 26In 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
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.
Q 27What headline did Buffett put on his New York Times opinion piece during the 2008 financial crisis?
'Buy American. I am.'
'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.
Q 28Whom did Buffett dethrone in 2008 to become the world's richest person on the Forbes list?
Bill Gates
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.
Q 29Which railroad did Buffett buy for $34 billion in cash and stock in 2009?
Burlington Northern Santa Fe
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.
Q 30Which technology company did Buffett, a longtime tech sceptic, surprise investors by buying into in 2011?
IBM
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.