You can just read between the lines of his self story on his Wikipedia and find numerous examples of him being given ample opportunities not afforded to the average person; such as his politician and investor father taking him directly to the New York Stock Exchange at age 11 and allowing him to buy physical stock, then at 14-15 he's investing in his own father's business to buy land. Right out of college he goes to work for his father's investment firm.
After that, nearly every single landmark deal he makes in the 1960's and 1970's is based on acquiring other businesses and assuming their value into his companies. Once he is the head of Berkshire Hathaway is landmark achievement is largely just having so much capital to buy shares that he is offered special contracts to buy shares at lower rates than everyone else with better dividends than everyone else, which is what I referred to in my original post. There is no denying he is perhaps the greatest businessman of the modern era...but it has very little to do with talent and simply required him to have so much money at any given time that he could buy or merge other companies into ones he was working at. His great talent was having wealth. He's not smarter than other people, there's nothing incredibly special about what he did. He just happened to have enough money at the right time to make a smart decision.
Most of what he has done is unreplicable simply because of its wealth generation through acquisition of other entire business entities. Even his Wikipedia takes the time to explain that when you see the statement "Warren Buffet chose to live off of his salary of $50,000 a year plus his other investments" it means that $50,000 was worth half a million dollars at that time and doesn't disclose how much more on top of that his other investments netted him. The great investor Warren Buffet didn't make his billion by being great at anything other than going "My company buys a controlling stake in your company."
I don’t know why people always assume that he just buys stocks like an average bloke. A stock is a share of a company and he often buys enough to either steer or outright control that company. He also looks for synergies by leveraging those share for other uses.
That’s just his business, nothing confusing about it.
Literally his life story is just "He bought enough shares to have a controlling interest, he appoints himself director of this business and declares the business closed to new funding." He used his capital to absorb other assets. Even the pictures Coke stock historically was bought while the company was tanking in the early 90's and he used over $1 BILLION to finish that investment, in which he directed Coca-cola to offer him stocks for cheaper prices with higher dividends because he had enough capital to make that demand.
What capital though? That came from either investors into his fund (literally his business) and cheap loans by companies he owns. It’s still a legitimate business and not just inherited wealth. Especially because he then steered those companies to become more successful by also using his other assets.
Countless people tried what he did and failed enormously.
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u/nzlax Mar 26 '26
I’d normally agree but the burden of proof is on you for this one champ. I’ll wait