December 17, 2025 • 43 mins
Warren Buffett rose from obscurity to become the richest person in the world - and he did it in a unique way. As a boy in Omaha he collected information obsessively - writing down car license numbers and hoarding bottle caps. As a young man, Buffett turned his focus on scouring business accounts to find companies that had hidden value no one else could spot.
We tell the story of young Warren Buffett as he quietly worked building up the expertise and accumulating the wealth that would allow him to become the most famous investor of our age.
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Speaker 1 (00:17):
Pushkin too quick. No, it's perfect push kit stuff.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
You got it, Jacob, I wanted you to see one
of my prize possessions. I hit it in a bag
(00:41):
so that you would not see it. It is a round, cuddly,
plushy Warren Buffet.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
He's got like an argyle sweater and a golf club,
which is weird, like it should be a cherry coke
box of seas can even like a hand financial document
annual report. Yeah, why are golf club?
Speaker 2 (01:01):
I think people who golf like Warren Buffett and it's
just a product that you can buy. A student got
it for me, who went to the most recent Berkshire
Hathaway shareholders meeting now the.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Berkshire Hathaway Sheerwolder's knitting. Always wanted to go. It's a famous.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Event and this was the one where he announced his retirement.
My student eagerly like texted me the whole time so excited.
He knows that I love Warren Buffett and I brought
it because it's such a weird, unlikely thing. It is
hard to buy soft plushy dolls of billionaires because who
would want to sleep with the little elon musk doll
at night.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Yeah, this finance seems less likely, right, Like, it's not
gonna be a plushy Jamie Diamond or a plushy like
Ken Griffin.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
No, no, no, no, Ken Griffin will cut you in
the night. And I think that they made a pleasure
of him because Warren Buffett is sort of extraordinary in
the history of finance. I mean there's a raw amount
of money, right, one hundred and forty five billion dollars
net worth according to Forbes. Right, but there's also the
way he earned his billions. Most billionaires, if you think
(02:07):
about it these days, started a company, a tiny company
that became huge, owned all the stock in it, and
so on, paper became rich. Or are the children or
the children or the children of the children. Yeah, Warren
Buffett did it by investing in other people's companies. He
hasn't really like made a product himself. He buys companies
that have good products.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Which in a way makes it all the more amazing
that he is this like beloved I'm gonna say beloved figure. Right, Like,
people generally don't like finance people, and they like Warren Buffett.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
He is a symbol of what people want finance to be. Right, Oh,
you buy good companies at good prices and you hold
them through thick and thin.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
Like.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
He's legendarily honest. You know, his word is his bond.
His handshake does not need lawyers, Jacob.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
I mean, I'm sure he has lawyers.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
He has a lot of lawyers, right, But you know
he eats at McDonald's every morning, He sweeks cherry coke
all day long, that he goes home to a tiny
house in Omaha and plays bridge. I mean, if if
he didn't exist, you would have to invent a Warren
Buffett just for those days. You know, when the stock
market like does something terrible, you can always just say, well,
there's Warren Buffett, right, Why can't you be more like
(03:17):
Warren Buffett.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
The honest one hundred and forty five billion dollar financier.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Yeah, you can be a decent fellow. And today on
the show, as part of our investing series, I'm going
to show you that Warren Buffett is a complete fraud.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Yes, no, he's totally not. He's a great guy.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
I'm just going to say that he is not as
cuddly and feel good as you might think. Is a
very shrewd man. He is a shark, really when it
comes to business deals. And today on the show, we
are going to show you how he got that way,
young Buffett.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
I'm Robert Smith, I'm Jacob Goldstein, and this is Business History,
a show about the history of business.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
This is part of our series on stock market legends.
We already told you the story of Jesse Livermore, a
very different story in a very different time, the wild
West of speculation and tomfoolery, you know, in the Gilded
Age and right before the Great stock market crash. And
today we're going to pick up a few years later.
Because Warren Buffett was born in nineteen thirty, right at
the start of the depression, and before he was a legend,
(04:20):
before he was a billionaire, he was just a young
man who didn't want to work hard and figured out
a giant flaw in the stock market. Yes, to understand
how Warren Buffett cracked the code of finance, you have
to put where's cuddly guy, He's way over there. You
have to put cuddly Warren Buffett out of your mind,
(04:40):
and you have to picture Warren Buffett, weird kid born
in nineteen thirty. As I said, Omaha, Nebraska. It's after
the Great stock market crash beginning of the depression. His
father is a stockbroker, not a well respected profession after
the Great Crash in nineteen twenty nine. Yeah yeah, yeah,
and he'd eventually become a congressman. His father also not
(05:00):
a respected profession ever, I know. And Warren Buffett is
an awkward kid and an obsessive kid.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
Like.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
One of the things he does is he loves collecting things,
a very Warren Buffett way, right. He starts to collect
bottle caps, but not just the bottle caps on his
own bottles. He goes to all the filling stations, the
gas stations in town to where they sell the drinks.
He goes into the ice chests where they have them
and digs around for excess bottle caps, and then he
(05:29):
puts them in piles in his basement and at night
he sorts the bottle caps, the rare ones, the popular ones.
He thinks it's information that no one else has for
some reason, right.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
And he's not in this to make money, right, He's
just trying to sort of understand the world. Like in
New York. It reminds me of in New York. There's
a certain kind of frankly it's usually a little boy
who's really into like trains and buses, and there's a
sense of like the maps and the organization. It feels
like a Omaha nineteen thirty version of that.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
At one point, Warren Buffett and his friend recorded the
license plate number of every car that came.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
By their house. Yes, just in case, just in case.
It's just like there's some order in the world. There's some. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Warren Buffett had a job early, you know, newspaper rowd.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
He worked as a delivery boy.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
For his grandfather's grocery business. He told Alice Schroeder in
her book Snowball, It's a biography of Warren Buffett, he said, quote,
I didn't learn anything except I don't like hard work.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
I actually think an aversion to hard work is a
quality you see in people who are entrepreneurial, like successful
in a certain way, like Thomas Edison loved hard work.
But there's another version, which is like people find what
feels like play to them and then they do it
all all the time. But it turns out, right, you
(06:48):
love reading financial reports or building cars, and that doesn't.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Feel like work. Yeah, I think that's right. Warren Buffett,
you know, he didn't have good grades. He just didn't
want to do what other people told him to do.
He lived a life of petty crime.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
That is shocking.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
I know, I love this. So he and his friends
would case out the local series. This is another quote
from the book. It's so good. We would steal the
place blind, We'd steal golf bags and golf clubs. Walked
out of the lower level where the sporting goods were
up the stairway to the street carrying a golf bag
and golf clubs, and the clubs were stolen, and so
is the bag. I stole hundreds of golf balls.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
That explains the golf club on the word buffet plusure.
It's about his crime. It's about his crime. He's a
friendly old man who stole that golf club.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
Now, Buffett was also making money as a kid, like
he filed tax returns at the age of fourteen. That's
so much money he made from his newspaper route.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
But I keep was he selling the stolen golf clubs
and filing.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
Taxes and filing Texas Very buffet right, honest thief. But
I come back to this obsession thing that he clearly had, right,
I mean this ended up being a very important time
at a very particular moment in the stock market, where
in order to succeed you had to like do the
equivalent of writing down license plates, You had to do
(08:05):
the detailed work to figure out what things were worth
in the stock market. So Buffett drifts through college, doesn't
do very well with the ladies, or so he says,
ends up at Columbia Business School, my alma mater, and
this is the nineteen fifties, and by this point all
of his fellow students want jobs in big businesses. They
want to work for GM and US Steel.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
It's that that post war era is all about that, right,
Like there's not like crazy new businesses starting up like
there were in the late eighteen hundreds or the late
nineteen hundreds. Right, it's this very steady, stable economy.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
Everyone wants to be safe, and honestly, like the safe
economy is growing, so you can make money and you can.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
Do what's riding up you just the organization man.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
But not Warren Buffett, right, he's obsessed with this larger
than life investing professor at Columbia named Benjamin Graham legend,
a legend. So he'd read this book by Benjamin Graham
called The Intelligent Investor. You can get it to this day,
people still read it right. This book completely changed the
way Buffett and a bunch of other investors at the
(09:11):
time thought about stocks. Like when we talked about the
stock market before the Great Crash of nineteen twenty nine,
Jesse Livermore, we talked about the market like it was
a rigged game, really, because it was Speculators would buy
a stock and bid up the price of it, try
to sell it to each other. They called them painting
the tape, right, They try to get their money out
(09:32):
before it crashed. But it went up and it crashed,
And this is what the stock market was.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
It was like all meme stocks.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
Yeah, exactly all the time, right, all momentum trades, psychology
of the market. But Buffett's mentor, Benjamin Graham, he said
something that sounds very obvious, but it's missed by a
lot of people even today. He said, the stocks are
real companies. Stocks represent ownerships in companies that make things.
They're not just numbers that go up and down. They
(10:00):
represent this physical thing in the world. And so just
as if you're buying, you know, a sweater or a car,
you want it to be good, you want it to
last long time, and you want to get a deal
on it, you w atre on sale. Right, you said,
just do the same thing for stocks, look for stocks
and companies that are good companies that will last for
(10:21):
a long time, that you can find on sale.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
And like, it's worth pausing here for a minute, right,
because still today it sounds almost naive to talk about
stocks in this way. But also it is what a
stock is. Right. You own a share a part of
a company, and in the sort of platonic ideal of
the world, that should be worth some share of all
of the company's future profits. Right. They call this a
(10:45):
discounted cash flow model which you have built, which you
have showed me, And like, in the long run, it's
more or less true, right, in the long run, long average, Yeah,
the price of a stock does represent the best guests
the world can make today about the value of that
company's profits from today until forever.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
But a lot of investors don't think about the long run.
They're just like, will more people buy it tomorrow? And
can I sell it for more money than I bought?
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Like it's so weird to me, frank the way it's
like what did it do today and what is it
going to do tomorrow? Nobody knows what it's going to
do tomorrow now.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
To be fair, it was hard at the time that
we're talking about, the nineteen fifties to get the kind
of information you would need to figure out what a
company is really worth. You know, there wasn't a Yahoo Finance.
There were annual reports, but you had to search for them,
you had to get him in the mail, you had
to go to the library.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
And importantly, right there wasn't this giant industry like there
is today of people who are pouring over those things
and getting all the information they can out of them.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
Luckily, Warren Buffett is a collector of weird things and
is willing to go the extra mile to find them.
He was perfect for the situation. So he signs up
for Graham's investing class at Columbia, and this is where
it tips over into actually disturbingly crazy.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
Right.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Buffett essentially starts to stock Professor Graham before he takes
the class. He finds out everything he can about Benjamin Graham,
including the fact that Graham was chairman of the board
of a company called Government Employees Insurance.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Company AH Geico, Geico.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
It will eventually be known as Geico. This is way
before the Gecko, right, And Buffett is like, huh, what
is up with this Geico company? And again, he's twenty
years old, he's in school. This is his professor. He
hasn't even taken the course. He gets on a train
from New York to DC to go visit Geico to
find out more about.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
It, knocks on the door on a Saturday, doors or lotday.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
A janitor lets him in because Buffett says, oh, well,
my professor is the chairman of the board. And the
janitor is like whatever, kid, like, come on in. Only
one person is working on this Saturday at Geico, the
vice president of finance. And Buffett like knocks on his door, says,
can I ask you a question? And I saw an
interview with the vice per of finance later who was like, yeah,
(13:07):
I thought.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
I'd answer this kid's question right.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
Four hours go by four hours the vice president said
this was like talking to an investor in the insurance business,
an analyst who knew all of these things. And Boffett
later he talks about this moment a lot because what
he sees is he sees that certain companies have certain
strategic advantages, and Geico is one of them. It's a
(13:33):
stock that he would buy and end up eventually controlling
the company. Right, But here's what he learned about Geico
two things. First of all, it's an insurance company. They
take money in when things go wrong, crash your car,
they pay out the money. Yes, what they figured out
is we need good drivers. How do you know who's
going to be a good driver. Well, back in those days,
they're like, we're only going to ensure government workers who,
(13:55):
for some reason or maybe statistically, right, are less likely
to speed and get in a crash and drink and drives.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
If you could make up a theory, right, like, if
you're a risk averse, if you want to be a
very stable, steady person, go get a government job. You're
not going to get super rich, but you're probably not
going to get fired. Sounds like a lower risk driver
than the average person.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
So he sees a company that has identified a way
to lower their costs and to basically choose their customers
and have a competitive advantage because they specialize in government employees.
Where else are they going to go but your company?
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Right, So this is the moat, Right, This is one
of the big buffet ideas. Is not just a company
that is, you know, beating its competitors, but a company
that has a durable competitive advantage.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
That's like classic buffet, classic buffet. The other thing he
learns is the insurance company has piles and piles of
cash because people pay their premiums every month on time
the money comes in, and the company doesn't have to
pay out that money until much later when there's a crash.
Maybe they don't pay it out at all. Right, float,
(14:57):
this is called the float. This is called the floats.
And so he saw that this company was constantly looking
for things to invest in because I had so much money.
Uh huh, Young Warren Buffett is like, huh. And by
the way, this is all before he takes the investing cord.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
Tony has got a pile of bottle caps back in
his childhood. Bet.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
He starts to buy Geico right, shows up in the
class front row, raises his hand A plus, sure, I
would hope. So he wants to work for Benjamin Graham.
That's all he wants to do. Focused, focused, young man. Right,
So Warren Buffett goes to Benjamin Graham and says a plus,
can I come work for your company? And Benjamin Graham says, no,
(15:39):
interesting reason. Benjamin Graham was Jewish, huh, And he said
it's very hard for Jews to get jobs in Wall
Street and finance at this time.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
Depends on the firm at this time.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Yes, so he said that he would only hire Jewish
investors for his firm as a sort of affirmative action.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
Comfortable. I'll be honest with you that story. Yeah, as
you may know, I'm Jewish, and i feel a little
awkward about that, but I'm interested. Go on.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
This is what Benjamin Graham fought. Warren Buffett famously not
a Jew. Yes, he could not get a job company, right,
So he gets a job as a stockbroker like his
dad did.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
And Buffett hates it.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
Huh, hates being a stockbroker. And if you think about it,
being a stockbroker means you are a salesman and you
have to sell new companies to your investors all the time.
Buffett wants to buy one company. He wants everyone to
just buy Geico and to never sell it ever. And
if you're working on commission, that's a really that's a
(16:41):
really bad business. I got one stock for you to buy,
never sell it. You can't make money off of it.
He eventually does go back and gets a job with
Graham convinces him, and this is where the two of
them they cook up the system that it's going to
make Warren Buffett rich.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
After the break, It's the mid nineteen fifties and Warren
(17:24):
Buffett is living the dream.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
Maybe not his dream, but a classic American dream. He's
living in Westchester, outside of New York City. He's working
for his hero, Benjamin Graham. He's got a wife, Susan,
two kids soon to be three kids, Susie, Howie, and Peter,
and Buffett spends almost no time with them. He basically
eats dinner, goes upstairs and reads one financial report after
(17:47):
the other. Fifties Dad, that's what he loved, right, And
the key idea that he and Benjamin Graham had was
to find something that they referred to as a cigar
butt company. And the joke, I guess it is a
joke after the depression, right. The joke is that you
could find a cigar butt thrown in the gutter and
that'd be just enough tobacco left to get like two
(18:08):
good puffs out of it.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
And then you could throw it away. Right, So this
is different than the classic buffet. This is not the
way we think of buffet today. No, that's right.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
This is how young Buffett made his money because there
was this information gap in the market. If he could
find a cigar butt company, it felt like, I can
get a little bit of money out of this and
sell it. Then I'll be able to like multiply my money.
I'd be able to, like, you know, make it happen.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
Right.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
So here's an example. He found the Union Street railway
in New Bedford, Massachusetts. It's nineteen fifty five. There's a
company that owned a bunch of buses. I don't know
where the rail was, but a bunch of buses.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
They started out as one of those little urban street
car companies.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
Yeah, so they may have run a trolley car at
some point. By this point they are buses and an
amusement park.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
Amazing.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
Sure, so there's nothing remarkable about this company.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
But at an amusement park is fun, right, It's like
the Chinese Army. It's like they own a lot of
weird things.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
We have the news of the park and the way
you get there. So he starts to research the company,
and he finds out, in addition to the tilted world,
they have about a million dollars in treasury bonds and
cash just like sitting in the company. He does the
math figures out the company is worth like sixty dollars
per share if you include all this money laying around.
(19:35):
Stock selling for thirty or thirty five dollars.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
Amazing. So one of the reasons.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
Why there's probably this huge gap is that stocks weren't
all traded on a central system back then, right, So.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Like, just to be clear, this stock is not on
the New York Stock Exchange. It's some weird little company
that trades at some random little exchange. So like, people
working on Wall Street don't even know this stock exists.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
No, only a man who would spend every night pouring
over companies and company documents would know that this tiny
company exists. Right, So Buffa puts an ad in the
newspaper saying I will buy shares for a certain price.
He wants all the shares he can get his hands on,
hoping that there's like old retirees of the company who
have these stocks, who are like certificates.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Right, they probably have a drawer with the pass of
paper send them to me. It sounds like such a scam,
doesn't it. Like if you saw an ad in the
newspaper to send your stock certificate it, I would think
it was a scam.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
But maybe more trust back in those days. It's Warren Buffett, right.
So he builds up his position in this company, and
he does what I guess apparently is one of his tricks.
He shows up again on the weekend, like to like
barnstorm into the company, meets with the CEO, and whether
he convinces the CEO to do something or whether the
(20:51):
co is going to do it anyway, we don't know.
But soon afterwards the CEO is like, okay, we will
offer dividends, payments back on the stock, and we will
pay out our cash. Oh wow, I know Buffett makes
twenty thousand dollars. Look at that buying up cheap stock. Yeah,
sell it and high, which is good, Like if you're
a twenty something back in those days, twenty thousands is awesome.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
Right.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
Yeah, so I take it today, but put an add
in the newspaper. Taken he starts to find more and
more of these cigar bots, and you know, if you
read his biography, there's just like he has like intricate
details of each one.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
I think the man has never forgotten a stock price.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
Right, But I'm struck by the bigger picture of American
finance at the time. Right in the decades after the depression,
American companies were really cautious, right. They stockpiled cash and
bonds and emergency funds because there was this feeling like
the bad times can come again very quickly. So what
(21:50):
you had was companies that were really being overly cautious.
And that's what Buffett saw well.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
And also investors were clearly overly cautious, right, I mean
a they weren't doing the work of like finding these
obscure companies. But it's easy to forget now when we
just assume that, you know, the stock market, the S
and P is going to return whatever it is, eight
percent on average year after hear like it took decades
after the depression for the stock market to get back
to where it was. Like if you bought in twenty nine,
(22:19):
you were probably still underwater in like nineteen fifties, certainly
like into the forties, you know, So like not only
were companies being cautious, but so were investors.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
Yeah, who would want to buy these big names, the
general motors, right, but they didn't want to look at
some tiny company in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Buffett would get
something called the pink sheets, which were the prices of
these tiny companies that would come out once a week.
I assume that they were actually pink and that was
like the most up to date knowledge about the stocks.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
Once a week in the mail, running to the mailbox,
ripping over the pink sheet. Un blow.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
That's when Warren Buffet would do the Warren Buffett thing.
He'd start to call him on the phone. He'd start
to research the company, ask for all their stuff, like
he is putting in the extra work. And that is
how he is finding these companies, and no one else
was doing it other than Benjamin Graham and a few
other people who followed this philosophy. And so this is
the flaw, This is the flaw he found in the market,
and this is what he started to ride. He crosses
(23:18):
one hundred thousand dollars in net Worth in the mid
nineteen fifties. He's in his mid twenties, still a young
man managing other people's money. At this point millionaire around
the age of thirty has ten million dollars by the
late nineteen sixties.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
And the fun just these little companies one after another,
getting in, getting out. That's his move the whole time.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
He does some bigger companies. There's like a play on
AMX American Express that was because of a like a
cooking oil scandal. Too hard to get into, too hard
to get into. But the weird thing about this is that,
you know, he is a very successful investor, right making
millions of dollars on this technique. He's back in Omaha
(23:59):
at this point, and nobody knows much about him, huh,
Like he's not on the front page of the Wall
Street Journal. People are not writing about him. Really into
the late sixties, like when he is already you know,
almost middle aged. Yeah, and he starts to like twist
these ideas. You know, Benjamin Graham retires Buffett gets his
own investors, and he starts to to kind of take
(24:21):
these ideas and do it slightly differently, which is Benjamin
Graham preached diversification. His idea the flip side of the
cigar butts was buy a lot of them. You never
know which one's gonna make it and which one's not.
So like diversify, right, Warren Buffett is like, no, I
have good ideas. I have this success rate so far,
(24:43):
so I'm going to kind of go all in on
these companies I love.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
Now, that's counter not just to Benjamin Graham, right, but
to like math math right. So Markowitz right, that there's
this whole modern portfolio theory that's coming in right around
this time, right, the sixties. Yea, And like, it's a
pretty compelling case that diversification is good, that it is
a free lunch that you get basically the same return
with less kind of idiosyncratic risk. And Warren Buffett is disagreeing.
(25:09):
Here's what he says about that diversification is protection against ignorance.
It makes little sense if you know what you're doing.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
Huh boom for chumps, Jacob like us, I mean fair tough,
I'm fair. I mean it worked for him. I do
not advise this for everyone, right, But it did give
him a certain advantage over the Benjamin Grahams of the world,
which was, if you pile into certain companies in particular,
(25:38):
you don't have to rely on them to do the
right thing, to release this money that they're keeping to
their investors.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
Right.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
If you assemble enough stock, they have to listen to you.
You can get elected to the board. You can make
them do things right. And this was the next sort
of turn of the screw that Warren Buffett was doing.
He would find these undervalued companies and then he would
make them give him back the money. Huh, Sanborn Map Map.
(26:08):
It's a map company.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
They also own a chain of ice cream parlorts.
Speaker 2 (26:13):
That would be great, right, No, but they could tell
you how to get there because they made maps.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
So they specialized in selling very remember maps. You have
the Thomas Brother's Guide to the Back of the Car.
Oh yeah, yeah, it was a whole block in the
county book. Yeah, so this is even more detailed than
the Thomas brother maps. Right.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
They would sell these maps that were basically diagrams of
specific buildings and every floor so you knew where the
interest is and exits were, you know, the windows were
all of this sort of thing, and they would sell
it to insurance companies who needed to know how safe
the buildings were into fire departments, so they knew like
how to get in and out of the building if
there's a fire.
Speaker 1 (26:52):
Some mote by the way, yeah, right, Like who's going
to make maps of every building in America once one
company already has it exactly right, exactly right.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
So Offett starts to buy some of their stock, buys
enough that he gets on the board of directors, shows
up for the board meeting, right he's ready, looks around
at the board of and he realizes they don't really
own much stock. They are the board of directors because
I assume they are old men who have been on
(27:21):
the company board a long time, friends of somebody way
back when. And he's the one that actually owns a
large share.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
Of the company.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
The rest of them, they're just there for you know,
just for fun, right, I.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
Mean they're getting paid. Maybe they're friends of the CEO. Right,
classic CEO move is like pick the people who are
notionally your boss, who are actually your buddies.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
Buffett says to them, hey, okay, we got to do
the thing, right. You got all this extra money, why
don't we just give it back to your shareholders, which
is kind of me? And they're like yeah, no, And.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
He says.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
They light up some cigars and laugh, and he's thinking,
I paid for those cigars, I paid for the room.
I paid for you guys to sit here.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
Right, there's a classic problem with public companies. Right. People
have been aware of it for hundreds of years, the
principal agent problem. When one person or group of people
owns the company like the shareholders, and somebody else runs it,
the people running it are not gonna naturally act in
the best interests of the owners. They're gonna act in
their own best interests. The incentives are not aligned. Right.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
So he threatens a special meeting. He's going to like
take this to all the shareholders. Eventually the rest of
the board relents. They offer to give back some of
the companies excess money.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
Right, So this is his strategy, meaning pay it out
to shareholders, pay it out as defendends to the shareholders.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
Still, right, So this is the strategy. You find the
undervalued company, you buy the stock. If the price goes up, great,
you can sell the stock. The stock price goes down,
you buy more and more and more, and now you
have an underpriced company that you own a big chunk
of and you can bully them into doing what.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
You want, which is arguably the right thing. You can
bully them into acting in the best interests of the
owners of the company.
Speaker 2 (29:07):
Now they might say another depressions around the corner. This
could happen at any time, and we can't live on
the edge, mister Buffett, And he's like, it's my company
and I want the money. Usually worked. The one time
it didn't work. Maybe Warren Buffett's most famous investment. And
(29:27):
we'll do that Berkshire Hathaway.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
After the break, Ah, you.
Speaker 4 (29:34):
Fuddy, we'll go to the bathroom.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
That is the end of the ads. So Robert, when
we left, Warren Buffett was collecting cigar butts, bullying recalcitrant boards.
Now he's about to make a big moment.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
Yeah, it's the sixties, swinging sixties, clearly not in Omaha, Nebraska,
never really came there. But Buffett's looking around for these
tiny companies cigar butts, and he finds what he thinks
is a great one. It is a textile manufacturer in
also in New Bedford, Massachusetts, home of a lot of
dying industries.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
Yes, is it a whaling company, Yeah, exactly right.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
No, it is a textile manufacturer known as Berkshire Hathaway.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
Right, this great heard you heard of this textile company somehow.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
So they make fabric and eventually they'll specialize in the
lining to men's suits, you know, like that kind of
Rayon Satine kind of thing. Right now, even in the
nineteen sixties, nobody thought that there was going to be
a renaissance of textile manufacturing in Northeast United States, right,
(31:04):
it just was not happening. Most of the textile mills
had moved to the Southern United States. They were about
to move overseas. This is an expensive, low margin business
and anyone can make the lining to assunt.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
Yes, there is no mote, there is no moat.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
So the owner of Berkshire Hathaway was and I love
this name, Seabury Stanton, not a two.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
I'm not saying he.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
Was wearing a top hat, but he definitely owned a time.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
I'm thinking more yachting hat, like a like a captain's tet,
right for Sebury Stanton in New Bedford. That guy definitely.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
Definitely was on a yacht. Yeah, So young Buffett starts
doing his thing. He's acquiring shares of the company right secretly,
as he often did, because he didn't want anyone to
know that he was accumulating this large position. Right, So
he looks at it, right, it's seven dollars and fifty
cents a share. He thinks company's probably worth nineteen dollars
(31:59):
a year. Okay, right, double right, But Seabury Stanton also
knows the company is too cheap. Seabury Stanton is also
accumulating shares in his own company. Right, So Buffett does
the thing stops buy. He just wanted to stop in
and tell you I own a large part of your company.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
What are you going to do about it? Right?
Speaker 2 (32:18):
And Sebbery Stanton says, I know you're buying Berkshire Hathaway
and I want to buy it back. What will you
sell it for, mister Buffett? And Buffett goes eleven dollars
and fifty cents a share. Bought it for seven to
fifty sell it for eleven fifty good profit?
Speaker 1 (32:35):
Right? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (32:36):
And Seabury says, if I make that offer to you,
will you promise.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
To take it? Huh?
Speaker 2 (32:43):
And Buffett says sure, I mean, if it's in the
near future, I will take eleven dollars and fifty cents
a share. Then eventually Buffett gets the letter from Seabury's
stanting it is not eleven dollars and fifty cents a share.
Seabury is offering eleven dollars and three eighths three.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
Eighths because stocks traded in eights at that time, and
so three eighths is one eighth of a dollar less less,
yeah than he promised. What is it? It's like twelve cents,
so it's like, yeah, eleven thirty eight instead of eleven fifty. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
Buffett goes blisting, Right, this is not a bottle cap
I was promised. So this guy's trying to chisel me
for twelve cents, and.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
Buffett's in at seven to fifty a share, just to
be clear, until basically.
Speaker 2 (33:29):
Says I don't want this company, but I certainly don't
want Seabury Stanton to have this company. And Buffett says,
I'm not going to sell. I'm going to keep buying
and keep buying, keep buying, and suddenly, like the theory, right,
you're going to take a few puffs off the cigar button,
throw it away. All of a sudden, he controls the company.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
He's chewed up the cigar butt and swallowed it, and
he's like, I have a dying manufacturer in frankly, a
dying corner of the country. Right, shout out bed.
Speaker 2 (33:59):
He would later call it his biggest investment mistake.
Speaker 1 (34:02):
Huh. And just to be clear, as one knows, the
company he controls, the company that he rode to fame
and fortune, is called Berkshire Hathaway.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
Yes, they shut down the mills eventually, nineteen eighty five. Right,
there is no textile manufacturing Berkshire Hathaway now. But he
kept the name. It became the company that he used
to buy other companies and to grow this empire. And
I think he keeps the name just to remind him.
I think I think there's some sort of moral in
(34:33):
it from him.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
It was this moment when he acted irrationally, presumably.
Speaker 2 (34:38):
I mean, maybe it's a you know, a kind of
screw you to seaburys Stanton to this day man's Seabury's
dead and buried. But I think it was more just
to say, like, don't let your emotions rule you, you know.
And he wakes up every morning and looks at that name,
and maybe part of him is like that was almost.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
A mes sae. It's great. So it's like he's arguably
the greatest investor of the twentieth century, and he more
or less chose to name his holding company's holding company
in the right term. Yeah, after his worst investment or
one of his worst investments. It is elegance. It's kind
of like the you know, the Memento moriy coin that
like it's a little bit has that kind of vibe, yes,
(35:17):
like remember you are imperfect?
Speaker 2 (35:20):
Yeah, oh that's very the zen of Warren Buffett. I'm surprised.
I'm sure that book exists.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (35:26):
So he's got this company, this textile manufacturer. He's doing
all these other investments. He needs more and more money
about to keep the textile maker going and to like
continue to expand. And this this is where he finally
puts all these pieces I've been talking about together, because
he buys an insurance company.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
Yes, the float like we talked about with Float.
Speaker 2 (35:49):
This one is called National Indemnity.
Speaker 1 (35:52):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (35:53):
They make unusual insurance policies like, for example, circus performers, No, yes,
lion Tamer's, which you know, who's going to insure a
lion tamer?
Speaker 1 (36:04):
Right? The body parts of burlesque stars. It's like Lloyd's,
Like people talk about Lloyd's of London like a famous
tennis player might ensure their han Yeah, you.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
Know, I mean our voices obviously insured by National Unfamily right,
radio station treasure hunts. Well, you know, they would do
all these like giveaways at the radio station, and someone
needed to ensure that, like there would be enough money
and that they would pay off.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
Recently, so they're still kind of in that business. I
remember there was was it Yahoo? Somebody had a like
a a college basketball tournament, you know, the NCAA tournament
bracket where if you got every single one right, you
got I think a billion dollars. And I think Buffett
ensured that same idea.
Speaker 2 (36:46):
Yeah, And I mean eventually he would move into the
reinsurance business, which is insurance for insurers. Right, but it
works exactly the same way, right that all of these
linehammers at circus performers are paying money. Yeah, I guess
the owners of the circus are paying money. There probably
won't be an accident, they won't have to pay it out,
and so this money is coming in and this even.
Speaker 1 (37:08):
If they do have to pay it out, it'll be later, right,
Like that's the key thing is that you get to
hold the money. Yeah, exactly right.
Speaker 2 (37:16):
So, by the way, National Indemnity, he was a good company,
was doing well, but apparently he learned that the CEO
once a year would say, like, I can't stand being
this business. I just want to like go to Florida
and retire and be on vacation. I'm going to sell
this whole place. And Warren Buffett said to someone in
the company. The next time, he says he wants to
sell the whole company, call me, yeah, call me, And
(37:38):
apparently he the whole thing happened. He goes, he buys
National Indemnities, and the guy goes on vacation the next day.
Just makes it happen really quickly. Right, So now calling.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
Warren Buffett becomes a feature of the American capitalist landscape
after this, Right, this is a great moment phone history.
Speaker 2 (37:54):
You'll have a big phone, a big red phone. That's
his Buffet on it.
Speaker 1 (37:57):
Right.
Speaker 2 (37:58):
So, now the pieces are in place, got money coming
in from National Indemnity, a few other insurance like companies,
You've got the mills, You've got all these different investments
he has in different small companies.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
Right.
Speaker 2 (38:11):
And Buffett call this the golden age of capital allocation.
And what he means is, if you have enough different
businesses putting off different amounts of money, you can direct
that money to where it's going to make the most
difference and make the most return. He's essentially this self
funding machine at this point. He doesn't need investors to
(38:33):
come and he doesn't have to beg or borrow money
for his companies. He just has to move the streams
of money around. And he is about to hit the
nineteen seventies, which was a terrible economic time in America,
where there's a huge recession, the prices of companies go down,
and somebody, well, Warren Buffet, because that's what we're talking about.
(38:54):
And Warren Buffett has the cash and the confidence to
go wild in the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 1 (39:02):
So the bad stock market is just what he needs.
Speaker 2 (39:06):
It's exactly what he needs, and he takes stakes in
the Washington Post. He buys more Geico, he bought National Presto.
I built the names of these companies, which makes pressure
cookers and popcorn poppers.
Speaker 1 (39:19):
I love that.
Speaker 2 (39:19):
I love that he puts a big stake into Pinkerton's
detective agency, A little.
Speaker 1 (39:25):
Weird that I'm important in the business history in their
own way.
Speaker 2 (39:29):
By the end of nineteen seventies, Buffet's worth around one
hundred million dollars, right, and it's all under this umbrella
of Berkshire Hathaway. They don't make fabric anymore. They just
make well popcorn makers.
Speaker 1 (39:39):
They make money.
Speaker 2 (39:39):
They make money, right. And so this is the point
that I would say, young Warren Buffett has become essentially
the investor that we see today. Not a collector of
cigar butts, not like making these tiny little plays to
get some money back from these companies, but an owner
of big American companies that he thinks are at great
(40:02):
prices that he likes to hold and do the capital
allocation thing. So it's around this time, late sixties, early
seventies when he starts to appear.
Speaker 1 (40:12):
In the newspapers, right in the magazines.
Speaker 2 (40:14):
Forbes wrote an article called how Omaha Beats Wall Street.
I'm sure everyone's like, what is this about? And it
talked about Buffett's investment firm, which had been running about
twelve years at this point after he left Benjamin Graham,
and he said they had never lost money in this time.
Ten thousand dollars had been turned into a quarter of
a million dollars and if.
Speaker 1 (40:36):
You'd invested ten thousand at the beginning, yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:39):
And it was the first sort of articles that started
to talk about the Buffet weirdness right that, Oh he
lives in a small house, like he drives a small car,
Like he's a big deal in Omaha, but nobody knows him.
Speaker 1 (40:49):
He eats like a six year old boy.
Speaker 2 (40:51):
He just likes hamburgers and French fries and that's pretty
much all he eat, Cherry coke and Cherry Coke's before
the cook. You're right, oh, young Buffett. And one of
the reasons why I wanted to tell the story is that,
like that was really this like rare moment, both in
American finance and for Buffett himself. This idea that like
(41:12):
there were such vast misspricings and so little information in
the stock market that someone with his particular personality could
end up making this huge amount of money. Of course,
you'd go on to make billions and billions and billions
and billions that would dwarf this, but this was the
important part that the weird kid had his moment. Now,
(41:36):
of course, there's no end to the amount of information
you can get about all these companies, all these stocks,
and there's a million people well first of all that
read everything Warmbuffn't writes, and that want to do what
he does. Pour over you know, returns and how much
inventory do they have, and like, you know, what's their
working capital and all these tiny little measures of how
well a company is doing. They're doing the same thing
(41:56):
and so it's harder to do that. Yeah, Warm Buffet
has moved on.
Speaker 1 (41:59):
You have to go farther Afield, right. Actually, what I
think of here is Jane Street. You know Jane Street, Right,
It's it's this little trading firm owned by the people
who work there. They're all super smart math people, and
like the most recent time they were in the news,
it was because they had figured out that in the
Indian stock market you could make some weird move where
if you bought the options and the stock, you could
(42:22):
make prices move it away. That was like basically a
guaranteed profit, right. Like that actually seems kind of Buffet esque,
even though it doesn't have the like, oh, fundamental Grandpa
Buffet that's the later Buffet. It has the like, I'm
really into details and I'm going to look all over
the world for some financial detail that is going to
make me a book. I feel like that's the twenty
(42:43):
twenty five version of it.
Speaker 2 (42:44):
Yeah, and or even high speed trading that is finds
a mispricing that occurs in a millisecond and taking advantage.
Speaker 1 (42:50):
So now it happens with math. Right now, That kind
of move in the US markets, as far as I
can tell, rarely happens with reading the financial reports, and
it usually happens with math.
Speaker 2 (43:01):
With quants, yes, and they do not show up on
the weekend to meet with CEOs. Their machines do it
for their machines talk to each other. I mean, that's
the big picture, you know, finance. Successful strategies don't last
for long. You can only pull the young Buffett trick
one or two times and then you got to become.
Speaker 1 (43:20):
Old Buffett next time. On Business History, a show about
the history of business, how does Warren Buffett find a
new edge? How does a guy in the business of
ensuring lion tamers and buying up bus companies manage to
make a hundred billion dollars in an era dominated by technology.
(43:40):
It's not going to be easy.
Speaker 2 (43:42):
Our producer is Gabriel Hunter Chang, our engineer is Sarah Bruguier,
and our showrunner is Ryan Dilly. I'm Jacob Goldstein, and
I'm Robert Smith. We'll be back next week with another
episode of
Speaker 1 (43:51):
Business History, a show about the history wait for it,
of business
Pushkin too quick. No, it's perfect push kit stuff.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
You got it, Jacob, I wanted you to see one
of my prize possessions. I hit it in a bag
(00:41):
so that you would not see it. It is a round, cuddly,
plushy Warren Buffet.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
He's got like an argyle sweater and a golf club,
which is weird, like it should be a cherry coke
box of seas can even like a hand financial document
annual report. Yeah, why are golf club?
Speaker 2 (01:01):
I think people who golf like Warren Buffett and it's
just a product that you can buy. A student got
it for me, who went to the most recent Berkshire
Hathaway shareholders meeting now the.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Berkshire Hathaway Sheerwolder's knitting. Always wanted to go. It's a famous.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Event and this was the one where he announced his retirement.
My student eagerly like texted me the whole time so excited.
He knows that I love Warren Buffett and I brought
it because it's such a weird, unlikely thing. It is
hard to buy soft plushy dolls of billionaires because who
would want to sleep with the little elon musk doll
at night.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Yeah, this finance seems less likely, right, Like, it's not
gonna be a plushy Jamie Diamond or a plushy like
Ken Griffin.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
No, no, no, no, Ken Griffin will cut you in
the night. And I think that they made a pleasure
of him because Warren Buffett is sort of extraordinary in
the history of finance. I mean there's a raw amount
of money, right, one hundred and forty five billion dollars
net worth according to Forbes. Right, but there's also the
way he earned his billions. Most billionaires, if you think
(02:07):
about it these days, started a company, a tiny company
that became huge, owned all the stock in it, and
so on, paper became rich. Or are the children or
the children or the children of the children. Yeah, Warren
Buffett did it by investing in other people's companies. He
hasn't really like made a product himself. He buys companies
that have good products.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Which in a way makes it all the more amazing
that he is this like beloved I'm gonna say beloved figure. Right, Like,
people generally don't like finance people, and they like Warren Buffett.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
He is a symbol of what people want finance to be. Right, Oh,
you buy good companies at good prices and you hold
them through thick and thin.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
Like.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
He's legendarily honest. You know, his word is his bond.
His handshake does not need lawyers, Jacob.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
I mean, I'm sure he has lawyers.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
He has a lot of lawyers, right, But you know
he eats at McDonald's every morning, He sweeks cherry coke
all day long, that he goes home to a tiny
house in Omaha and plays bridge. I mean, if if
he didn't exist, you would have to invent a Warren
Buffett just for those days. You know, when the stock
market like does something terrible, you can always just say, well,
there's Warren Buffett, right, Why can't you be more like
(03:17):
Warren Buffett.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
The honest one hundred and forty five billion dollar financier.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Yeah, you can be a decent fellow. And today on
the show, as part of our investing series, I'm going
to show you that Warren Buffett is a complete fraud.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Yes, no, he's totally not. He's a great guy.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
I'm just going to say that he is not as
cuddly and feel good as you might think. Is a
very shrewd man. He is a shark, really when it
comes to business deals. And today on the show, we
are going to show you how he got that way,
young Buffett.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
I'm Robert Smith, I'm Jacob Goldstein, and this is Business History,
a show about the history of business.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
This is part of our series on stock market legends.
We already told you the story of Jesse Livermore, a
very different story in a very different time, the wild
West of speculation and tomfoolery, you know, in the Gilded
Age and right before the Great stock market crash. And
today we're going to pick up a few years later.
Because Warren Buffett was born in nineteen thirty, right at
the start of the depression, and before he was a legend,
(04:20):
before he was a billionaire, he was just a young
man who didn't want to work hard and figured out
a giant flaw in the stock market. Yes, to understand
how Warren Buffett cracked the code of finance, you have
to put where's cuddly guy, He's way over there. You
have to put cuddly Warren Buffett out of your mind,
(04:40):
and you have to picture Warren Buffett, weird kid born
in nineteen thirty. As I said, Omaha, Nebraska. It's after
the Great stock market crash beginning of the depression. His
father is a stockbroker, not a well respected profession after
the Great Crash in nineteen twenty nine. Yeah yeah, yeah,
and he'd eventually become a congressman. His father also not
(05:00):
a respected profession ever, I know. And Warren Buffett is
an awkward kid and an obsessive kid.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
Like.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
One of the things he does is he loves collecting things,
a very Warren Buffett way, right. He starts to collect
bottle caps, but not just the bottle caps on his
own bottles. He goes to all the filling stations, the
gas stations in town to where they sell the drinks.
He goes into the ice chests where they have them
and digs around for excess bottle caps, and then he
(05:29):
puts them in piles in his basement and at night
he sorts the bottle caps, the rare ones, the popular ones.
He thinks it's information that no one else has for
some reason, right.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
And he's not in this to make money, right, He's
just trying to sort of understand the world. Like in
New York. It reminds me of in New York. There's
a certain kind of frankly it's usually a little boy
who's really into like trains and buses, and there's a
sense of like the maps and the organization. It feels
like a Omaha nineteen thirty version of that.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
At one point, Warren Buffett and his friend recorded the
license plate number of every car that came.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
By their house. Yes, just in case, just in case.
It's just like there's some order in the world. There's some. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Warren Buffett had a job early, you know, newspaper rowd.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
He worked as a delivery boy.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
For his grandfather's grocery business. He told Alice Schroeder in
her book Snowball, It's a biography of Warren Buffett, he said, quote,
I didn't learn anything except I don't like hard work.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
I actually think an aversion to hard work is a
quality you see in people who are entrepreneurial, like successful
in a certain way, like Thomas Edison loved hard work.
But there's another version, which is like people find what
feels like play to them and then they do it
all all the time. But it turns out, right, you
(06:48):
love reading financial reports or building cars, and that doesn't.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Feel like work. Yeah, I think that's right. Warren Buffett,
you know, he didn't have good grades. He just didn't
want to do what other people told him to do.
He lived a life of petty crime.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
That is shocking.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
I know, I love this. So he and his friends
would case out the local series. This is another quote
from the book. It's so good. We would steal the
place blind, We'd steal golf bags and golf clubs. Walked
out of the lower level where the sporting goods were
up the stairway to the street carrying a golf bag
and golf clubs, and the clubs were stolen, and so
is the bag. I stole hundreds of golf balls.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
That explains the golf club on the word buffet plusure.
It's about his crime. It's about his crime. He's a
friendly old man who stole that golf club.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
Now, Buffett was also making money as a kid, like
he filed tax returns at the age of fourteen. That's
so much money he made from his newspaper route.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
But I keep was he selling the stolen golf clubs
and filing.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
Taxes and filing Texas Very buffet right, honest thief. But
I come back to this obsession thing that he clearly had, right,
I mean this ended up being a very important time
at a very particular moment in the stock market, where
in order to succeed you had to like do the
equivalent of writing down license plates, You had to do
(08:05):
the detailed work to figure out what things were worth
in the stock market. So Buffett drifts through college, doesn't
do very well with the ladies, or so he says,
ends up at Columbia Business School, my alma mater, and
this is the nineteen fifties, and by this point all
of his fellow students want jobs in big businesses. They
want to work for GM and US Steel.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
It's that that post war era is all about that, right,
Like there's not like crazy new businesses starting up like
there were in the late eighteen hundreds or the late
nineteen hundreds. Right, it's this very steady, stable economy.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
Everyone wants to be safe, and honestly, like the safe
economy is growing, so you can make money and you can.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
Do what's riding up you just the organization man.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
But not Warren Buffett, right, he's obsessed with this larger
than life investing professor at Columbia named Benjamin Graham legend,
a legend. So he'd read this book by Benjamin Graham
called The Intelligent Investor. You can get it to this day,
people still read it right. This book completely changed the
way Buffett and a bunch of other investors at the
(09:11):
time thought about stocks. Like when we talked about the
stock market before the Great Crash of nineteen twenty nine,
Jesse Livermore, we talked about the market like it was
a rigged game, really, because it was Speculators would buy
a stock and bid up the price of it, try
to sell it to each other. They called them painting
the tape, right, They try to get their money out
(09:32):
before it crashed. But it went up and it crashed,
And this is what the stock market was.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
It was like all meme stocks.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
Yeah, exactly all the time, right, all momentum trades, psychology
of the market. But Buffett's mentor, Benjamin Graham, he said
something that sounds very obvious, but it's missed by a
lot of people even today. He said, the stocks are
real companies. Stocks represent ownerships in companies that make things.
They're not just numbers that go up and down. They
(10:00):
represent this physical thing in the world. And so just
as if you're buying, you know, a sweater or a car,
you want it to be good, you want it to
last long time, and you want to get a deal
on it, you w atre on sale. Right, you said,
just do the same thing for stocks, look for stocks
and companies that are good companies that will last for
(10:21):
a long time, that you can find on sale.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
And like, it's worth pausing here for a minute, right,
because still today it sounds almost naive to talk about
stocks in this way. But also it is what a
stock is. Right. You own a share a part of
a company, and in the sort of platonic ideal of
the world, that should be worth some share of all
of the company's future profits. Right. They call this a
(10:45):
discounted cash flow model which you have built, which you
have showed me, And like, in the long run, it's
more or less true, right, in the long run, long average, Yeah,
the price of a stock does represent the best guests
the world can make today about the value of that
company's profits from today until forever.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
But a lot of investors don't think about the long run.
They're just like, will more people buy it tomorrow? And
can I sell it for more money than I bought?
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Like it's so weird to me, frank the way it's
like what did it do today and what is it
going to do tomorrow? Nobody knows what it's going to
do tomorrow now.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
To be fair, it was hard at the time that
we're talking about, the nineteen fifties to get the kind
of information you would need to figure out what a
company is really worth. You know, there wasn't a Yahoo Finance.
There were annual reports, but you had to search for them,
you had to get him in the mail, you had
to go to the library.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
And importantly, right there wasn't this giant industry like there
is today of people who are pouring over those things
and getting all the information they can out of them.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
Luckily, Warren Buffett is a collector of weird things and
is willing to go the extra mile to find them.
He was perfect for the situation. So he signs up
for Graham's investing class at Columbia, and this is where
it tips over into actually disturbingly crazy.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
Right.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Buffett essentially starts to stock Professor Graham before he takes
the class. He finds out everything he can about Benjamin Graham,
including the fact that Graham was chairman of the board
of a company called Government Employees Insurance.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Company AH Geico, Geico.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
It will eventually be known as Geico. This is way
before the Gecko, right, And Buffett is like, huh, what
is up with this Geico company? And again, he's twenty
years old, he's in school. This is his professor. He
hasn't even taken the course. He gets on a train
from New York to DC to go visit Geico to
find out more about.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
It, knocks on the door on a Saturday, doors or lotday.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
A janitor lets him in because Buffett says, oh, well,
my professor is the chairman of the board. And the
janitor is like whatever, kid, like, come on in. Only
one person is working on this Saturday at Geico, the
vice president of finance. And Buffett like knocks on his door, says,
can I ask you a question? And I saw an
interview with the vice per of finance later who was like, yeah,
(13:07):
I thought.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
I'd answer this kid's question right.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
Four hours go by four hours the vice president said
this was like talking to an investor in the insurance business,
an analyst who knew all of these things. And Boffett
later he talks about this moment a lot because what
he sees is he sees that certain companies have certain
strategic advantages, and Geico is one of them. It's a
(13:33):
stock that he would buy and end up eventually controlling
the company. Right, But here's what he learned about Geico
two things. First of all, it's an insurance company. They
take money in when things go wrong, crash your car,
they pay out the money. Yes, what they figured out
is we need good drivers. How do you know who's
going to be a good driver. Well, back in those days,
they're like, we're only going to ensure government workers who,
(13:55):
for some reason or maybe statistically, right, are less likely
to speed and get in a crash and drink and drives.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
If you could make up a theory, right, like, if
you're a risk averse, if you want to be a
very stable, steady person, go get a government job. You're
not going to get super rich, but you're probably not
going to get fired. Sounds like a lower risk driver
than the average person.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
So he sees a company that has identified a way
to lower their costs and to basically choose their customers
and have a competitive advantage because they specialize in government employees.
Where else are they going to go but your company?
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Right, So this is the moat, Right, This is one
of the big buffet ideas. Is not just a company
that is, you know, beating its competitors, but a company
that has a durable competitive advantage.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
That's like classic buffet, classic buffet. The other thing he
learns is the insurance company has piles and piles of
cash because people pay their premiums every month on time
the money comes in, and the company doesn't have to
pay out that money until much later when there's a crash.
Maybe they don't pay it out at all. Right, float,
(14:57):
this is called the float. This is called the floats.
And so he saw that this company was constantly looking
for things to invest in because I had so much money.
Uh huh, Young Warren Buffett is like, huh. And by
the way, this is all before he takes the investing cord.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
Tony has got a pile of bottle caps back in
his childhood. Bet.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
He starts to buy Geico right, shows up in the
class front row, raises his hand A plus, sure, I
would hope. So he wants to work for Benjamin Graham.
That's all he wants to do. Focused, focused, young man. Right,
So Warren Buffett goes to Benjamin Graham and says a plus,
can I come work for your company? And Benjamin Graham says, no,
(15:39):
interesting reason. Benjamin Graham was Jewish, huh, And he said
it's very hard for Jews to get jobs in Wall
Street and finance at this time.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
Depends on the firm at this time.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Yes, so he said that he would only hire Jewish
investors for his firm as a sort of affirmative action.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
Comfortable. I'll be honest with you that story. Yeah, as
you may know, I'm Jewish, and i feel a little
awkward about that, but I'm interested. Go on.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
This is what Benjamin Graham fought. Warren Buffett famously not
a Jew. Yes, he could not get a job company, right,
So he gets a job as a stockbroker like his
dad did.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
And Buffett hates it.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
Huh, hates being a stockbroker. And if you think about it,
being a stockbroker means you are a salesman and you
have to sell new companies to your investors all the time.
Buffett wants to buy one company. He wants everyone to
just buy Geico and to never sell it ever. And
if you're working on commission, that's a really that's a
(16:41):
really bad business. I got one stock for you to buy,
never sell it. You can't make money off of it.
He eventually does go back and gets a job with
Graham convinces him, and this is where the two of
them they cook up the system that it's going to
make Warren Buffett rich.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
After the break, It's the mid nineteen fifties and Warren
(17:24):
Buffett is living the dream.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
Maybe not his dream, but a classic American dream. He's
living in Westchester, outside of New York City. He's working
for his hero, Benjamin Graham. He's got a wife, Susan,
two kids soon to be three kids, Susie, Howie, and Peter,
and Buffett spends almost no time with them. He basically
eats dinner, goes upstairs and reads one financial report after
(17:47):
the other. Fifties Dad, that's what he loved, right, And
the key idea that he and Benjamin Graham had was
to find something that they referred to as a cigar
butt company. And the joke, I guess it is a
joke after the depression, right. The joke is that you
could find a cigar butt thrown in the gutter and
that'd be just enough tobacco left to get like two
(18:08):
good puffs out of it.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
And then you could throw it away. Right, So this
is different than the classic buffet. This is not the
way we think of buffet today. No, that's right.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
This is how young Buffett made his money because there
was this information gap in the market. If he could
find a cigar butt company, it felt like, I can
get a little bit of money out of this and
sell it. Then I'll be able to like multiply my money.
I'd be able to, like, you know, make it happen.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
Right.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
So here's an example. He found the Union Street railway
in New Bedford, Massachusetts. It's nineteen fifty five. There's a
company that owned a bunch of buses. I don't know
where the rail was, but a bunch of buses.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
They started out as one of those little urban street
car companies.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
Yeah, so they may have run a trolley car at
some point. By this point they are buses and an
amusement park.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
Amazing.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
Sure, so there's nothing remarkable about this company.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
But at an amusement park is fun, right, It's like
the Chinese Army. It's like they own a lot of
weird things.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
We have the news of the park and the way
you get there. So he starts to research the company,
and he finds out, in addition to the tilted world,
they have about a million dollars in treasury bonds and
cash just like sitting in the company. He does the
math figures out the company is worth like sixty dollars
per share if you include all this money laying around.
(19:35):
Stock selling for thirty or thirty five dollars.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
Amazing. So one of the reasons.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
Why there's probably this huge gap is that stocks weren't
all traded on a central system back then, right, So.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Like, just to be clear, this stock is not on
the New York Stock Exchange. It's some weird little company
that trades at some random little exchange. So like, people
working on Wall Street don't even know this stock exists.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
No, only a man who would spend every night pouring
over companies and company documents would know that this tiny
company exists. Right, So Buffa puts an ad in the
newspaper saying I will buy shares for a certain price.
He wants all the shares he can get his hands on,
hoping that there's like old retirees of the company who
have these stocks, who are like certificates.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Right, they probably have a drawer with the pass of
paper send them to me. It sounds like such a scam,
doesn't it. Like if you saw an ad in the
newspaper to send your stock certificate it, I would think
it was a scam.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
But maybe more trust back in those days. It's Warren Buffett, right.
So he builds up his position in this company, and
he does what I guess apparently is one of his tricks.
He shows up again on the weekend, like to like
barnstorm into the company, meets with the CEO, and whether
he convinces the CEO to do something or whether the
(20:51):
co is going to do it anyway, we don't know.
But soon afterwards the CEO is like, okay, we will
offer dividends, payments back on the stock, and we will
pay out our cash. Oh wow, I know Buffett makes
twenty thousand dollars. Look at that buying up cheap stock. Yeah,
sell it and high, which is good, Like if you're
a twenty something back in those days, twenty thousands is awesome.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
Right.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
Yeah, so I take it today, but put an add
in the newspaper. Taken he starts to find more and
more of these cigar bots, and you know, if you
read his biography, there's just like he has like intricate
details of each one.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
I think the man has never forgotten a stock price.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
Right, But I'm struck by the bigger picture of American
finance at the time. Right in the decades after the depression,
American companies were really cautious, right. They stockpiled cash and
bonds and emergency funds because there was this feeling like
the bad times can come again very quickly. So what
(21:50):
you had was companies that were really being overly cautious.
And that's what Buffett saw well.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
And also investors were clearly overly cautious, right, I mean
a they weren't doing the work of like finding these
obscure companies. But it's easy to forget now when we
just assume that, you know, the stock market, the S
and P is going to return whatever it is, eight
percent on average year after hear like it took decades
after the depression for the stock market to get back
to where it was. Like if you bought in twenty nine,
(22:19):
you were probably still underwater in like nineteen fifties, certainly
like into the forties, you know, So like not only
were companies being cautious, but so were investors.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
Yeah, who would want to buy these big names, the
general motors, right, but they didn't want to look at
some tiny company in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Buffett would get
something called the pink sheets, which were the prices of
these tiny companies that would come out once a week.
I assume that they were actually pink and that was
like the most up to date knowledge about the stocks.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
Once a week in the mail, running to the mailbox,
ripping over the pink sheet. Un blow.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
That's when Warren Buffet would do the Warren Buffett thing.
He'd start to call him on the phone. He'd start
to research the company, ask for all their stuff, like
he is putting in the extra work. And that is
how he is finding these companies, and no one else
was doing it other than Benjamin Graham and a few
other people who followed this philosophy. And so this is
the flaw, This is the flaw he found in the market,
and this is what he started to ride. He crosses
(23:18):
one hundred thousand dollars in net Worth in the mid
nineteen fifties. He's in his mid twenties, still a young
man managing other people's money. At this point millionaire around
the age of thirty has ten million dollars by the
late nineteen sixties.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
And the fun just these little companies one after another,
getting in, getting out. That's his move the whole time.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
He does some bigger companies. There's like a play on
AMX American Express that was because of a like a
cooking oil scandal. Too hard to get into, too hard
to get into. But the weird thing about this is that,
you know, he is a very successful investor, right making
millions of dollars on this technique. He's back in Omaha
(23:59):
at this point, and nobody knows much about him, huh,
Like he's not on the front page of the Wall
Street Journal. People are not writing about him. Really into
the late sixties, like when he is already you know,
almost middle aged. Yeah, and he starts to like twist
these ideas. You know, Benjamin Graham retires Buffett gets his
own investors, and he starts to to kind of take
(24:21):
these ideas and do it slightly differently, which is Benjamin
Graham preached diversification. His idea the flip side of the
cigar butts was buy a lot of them. You never
know which one's gonna make it and which one's not.
So like diversify, right, Warren Buffett is like, no, I
have good ideas. I have this success rate so far,
(24:43):
so I'm going to kind of go all in on
these companies I love.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
Now, that's counter not just to Benjamin Graham, right, but
to like math math right. So Markowitz right, that there's
this whole modern portfolio theory that's coming in right around
this time, right, the sixties. Yea, And like, it's a
pretty compelling case that diversification is good, that it is
a free lunch that you get basically the same return
with less kind of idiosyncratic risk. And Warren Buffett is disagreeing.
(25:09):
Here's what he says about that diversification is protection against ignorance.
It makes little sense if you know what you're doing.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
Huh boom for chumps, Jacob like us, I mean fair tough,
I'm fair. I mean it worked for him. I do
not advise this for everyone, right, But it did give
him a certain advantage over the Benjamin Grahams of the world,
which was, if you pile into certain companies in particular,
(25:38):
you don't have to rely on them to do the
right thing, to release this money that they're keeping to
their investors.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
Right.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
If you assemble enough stock, they have to listen to you.
You can get elected to the board. You can make
them do things right. And this was the next sort
of turn of the screw that Warren Buffett was doing.
He would find these undervalued companies and then he would
make them give him back the money. Huh, Sanborn Map Map.
(26:08):
It's a map company.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
They also own a chain of ice cream parlorts.
Speaker 2 (26:13):
That would be great, right, No, but they could tell
you how to get there because they made maps.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
So they specialized in selling very remember maps. You have
the Thomas Brother's Guide to the Back of the Car.
Oh yeah, yeah, it was a whole block in the
county book. Yeah, so this is even more detailed than
the Thomas brother maps. Right.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
They would sell these maps that were basically diagrams of
specific buildings and every floor so you knew where the
interest is and exits were, you know, the windows were
all of this sort of thing, and they would sell
it to insurance companies who needed to know how safe
the buildings were into fire departments, so they knew like
how to get in and out of the building if
there's a fire.
Speaker 1 (26:52):
Some mote by the way, yeah, right, Like who's going
to make maps of every building in America once one
company already has it exactly right, exactly right.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
So Offett starts to buy some of their stock, buys
enough that he gets on the board of directors, shows
up for the board meeting, right he's ready, looks around
at the board of and he realizes they don't really
own much stock. They are the board of directors because
I assume they are old men who have been on
(27:21):
the company board a long time, friends of somebody way
back when. And he's the one that actually owns a
large share.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
Of the company.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
The rest of them, they're just there for you know,
just for fun, right, I.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
Mean they're getting paid. Maybe they're friends of the CEO. Right,
classic CEO move is like pick the people who are
notionally your boss, who are actually your buddies.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
Buffett says to them, hey, okay, we got to do
the thing, right. You got all this extra money, why
don't we just give it back to your shareholders, which
is kind of me? And they're like yeah, no, And.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
He says.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
They light up some cigars and laugh, and he's thinking,
I paid for those cigars, I paid for the room.
I paid for you guys to sit here.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
Right, there's a classic problem with public companies. Right. People
have been aware of it for hundreds of years, the
principal agent problem. When one person or group of people
owns the company like the shareholders, and somebody else runs it,
the people running it are not gonna naturally act in
the best interests of the owners. They're gonna act in
their own best interests. The incentives are not aligned. Right.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
So he threatens a special meeting. He's going to like
take this to all the shareholders. Eventually the rest of
the board relents. They offer to give back some of
the companies excess money.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
Right, So this is his strategy, meaning pay it out
to shareholders, pay it out as defendends to the shareholders.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
Still, right, So this is the strategy. You find the
undervalued company, you buy the stock. If the price goes up, great,
you can sell the stock. The stock price goes down,
you buy more and more and more, and now you
have an underpriced company that you own a big chunk
of and you can bully them into doing what.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
You want, which is arguably the right thing. You can
bully them into acting in the best interests of the
owners of the company.
Speaker 2 (29:07):
Now they might say another depressions around the corner. This
could happen at any time, and we can't live on
the edge, mister Buffett, And he's like, it's my company
and I want the money. Usually worked. The one time
it didn't work. Maybe Warren Buffett's most famous investment. And
(29:27):
we'll do that Berkshire Hathaway.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
After the break, Ah, you.
Speaker 4 (29:34):
Fuddy, we'll go to the bathroom.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
That is the end of the ads. So Robert, when
we left, Warren Buffett was collecting cigar butts, bullying recalcitrant boards.
Now he's about to make a big moment.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
Yeah, it's the sixties, swinging sixties, clearly not in Omaha, Nebraska,
never really came there. But Buffett's looking around for these
tiny companies cigar butts, and he finds what he thinks
is a great one. It is a textile manufacturer in
also in New Bedford, Massachusetts, home of a lot of
dying industries.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
Yes, is it a whaling company, Yeah, exactly right.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
No, it is a textile manufacturer known as Berkshire Hathaway.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
Right, this great heard you heard of this textile company somehow.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
So they make fabric and eventually they'll specialize in the
lining to men's suits, you know, like that kind of
Rayon Satine kind of thing. Right now, even in the
nineteen sixties, nobody thought that there was going to be
a renaissance of textile manufacturing in Northeast United States, right,
(31:04):
it just was not happening. Most of the textile mills
had moved to the Southern United States. They were about
to move overseas. This is an expensive, low margin business
and anyone can make the lining to assunt.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
Yes, there is no mote, there is no moat.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
So the owner of Berkshire Hathaway was and I love
this name, Seabury Stanton, not a two.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
I'm not saying he.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
Was wearing a top hat, but he definitely owned a time.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
I'm thinking more yachting hat, like a like a captain's tet,
right for Sebury Stanton in New Bedford. That guy definitely.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
Definitely was on a yacht. Yeah, So young Buffett starts
doing his thing. He's acquiring shares of the company right secretly,
as he often did, because he didn't want anyone to
know that he was accumulating this large position. Right, So
he looks at it, right, it's seven dollars and fifty
cents a share. He thinks company's probably worth nineteen dollars
(31:59):
a year. Okay, right, double right, But Seabury Stanton also
knows the company is too cheap. Seabury Stanton is also
accumulating shares in his own company. Right, So Buffett does
the thing stops buy. He just wanted to stop in
and tell you I own a large part of your company.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
What are you going to do about it? Right?
Speaker 2 (32:18):
And Sebbery Stanton says, I know you're buying Berkshire Hathaway
and I want to buy it back. What will you
sell it for, mister Buffett? And Buffett goes eleven dollars
and fifty cents a share. Bought it for seven to
fifty sell it for eleven fifty good profit?
Speaker 1 (32:35):
Right? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (32:36):
And Seabury says, if I make that offer to you,
will you promise.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
To take it? Huh?
Speaker 2 (32:43):
And Buffett says sure, I mean, if it's in the
near future, I will take eleven dollars and fifty cents
a share. Then eventually Buffett gets the letter from Seabury's
stanting it is not eleven dollars and fifty cents a share.
Seabury is offering eleven dollars and three eighths three.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
Eighths because stocks traded in eights at that time, and
so three eighths is one eighth of a dollar less less,
yeah than he promised. What is it? It's like twelve cents,
so it's like, yeah, eleven thirty eight instead of eleven fifty. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
Buffett goes blisting, Right, this is not a bottle cap
I was promised. So this guy's trying to chisel me
for twelve cents, and.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
Buffett's in at seven to fifty a share, just to
be clear, until basically.
Speaker 2 (33:29):
Says I don't want this company, but I certainly don't
want Seabury Stanton to have this company. And Buffett says,
I'm not going to sell. I'm going to keep buying
and keep buying, keep buying, and suddenly, like the theory, right,
you're going to take a few puffs off the cigar button,
throw it away. All of a sudden, he controls the company.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
He's chewed up the cigar butt and swallowed it, and
he's like, I have a dying manufacturer in frankly, a
dying corner of the country. Right, shout out bed.
Speaker 2 (33:59):
He would later call it his biggest investment mistake.
Speaker 1 (34:02):
Huh. And just to be clear, as one knows, the
company he controls, the company that he rode to fame
and fortune, is called Berkshire Hathaway.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
Yes, they shut down the mills eventually, nineteen eighty five. Right,
there is no textile manufacturing Berkshire Hathaway now. But he
kept the name. It became the company that he used
to buy other companies and to grow this empire. And
I think he keeps the name just to remind him.
I think I think there's some sort of moral in
(34:33):
it from him.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
It was this moment when he acted irrationally, presumably.
Speaker 2 (34:38):
I mean, maybe it's a you know, a kind of
screw you to seaburys Stanton to this day man's Seabury's
dead and buried. But I think it was more just
to say, like, don't let your emotions rule you, you know.
And he wakes up every morning and looks at that name,
and maybe part of him is like that was almost.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
A mes sae. It's great. So it's like he's arguably
the greatest investor of the twentieth century, and he more
or less chose to name his holding company's holding company
in the right term. Yeah, after his worst investment or
one of his worst investments. It is elegance. It's kind
of like the you know, the Memento moriy coin that
like it's a little bit has that kind of vibe, yes,
(35:17):
like remember you are imperfect?
Speaker 2 (35:20):
Yeah, oh that's very the zen of Warren Buffett. I'm surprised.
I'm sure that book exists.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 2 (35:26):
So he's got this company, this textile manufacturer. He's doing
all these other investments. He needs more and more money
about to keep the textile maker going and to like
continue to expand. And this this is where he finally
puts all these pieces I've been talking about together, because
he buys an insurance company.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
Yes, the float like we talked about with Float.
Speaker 2 (35:49):
This one is called National Indemnity.
Speaker 1 (35:52):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (35:53):
They make unusual insurance policies like, for example, circus performers, No, yes,
lion Tamer's, which you know, who's going to insure a
lion tamer?
Speaker 1 (36:04):
Right? The body parts of burlesque stars. It's like Lloyd's,
Like people talk about Lloyd's of London like a famous
tennis player might ensure their han Yeah, you.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
Know, I mean our voices obviously insured by National Unfamily right,
radio station treasure hunts. Well, you know, they would do
all these like giveaways at the radio station, and someone
needed to ensure that, like there would be enough money
and that they would pay off.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
Recently, so they're still kind of in that business. I
remember there was was it Yahoo? Somebody had a like
a a college basketball tournament, you know, the NCAA tournament
bracket where if you got every single one right, you
got I think a billion dollars. And I think Buffett
ensured that same idea.
Speaker 2 (36:46):
Yeah, And I mean eventually he would move into the
reinsurance business, which is insurance for insurers. Right, but it
works exactly the same way, right that all of these
linehammers at circus performers are paying money. Yeah, I guess
the owners of the circus are paying money. There probably
won't be an accident, they won't have to pay it out,
and so this money is coming in and this even.
Speaker 1 (37:08):
If they do have to pay it out, it'll be later, right,
Like that's the key thing is that you get to
hold the money. Yeah, exactly right.
Speaker 2 (37:16):
So, by the way, National Indemnity, he was a good company,
was doing well, but apparently he learned that the CEO
once a year would say, like, I can't stand being
this business. I just want to like go to Florida
and retire and be on vacation. I'm going to sell
this whole place. And Warren Buffett said to someone in
the company. The next time, he says he wants to
sell the whole company, call me, yeah, call me, And
(37:38):
apparently he the whole thing happened. He goes, he buys
National Indemnities, and the guy goes on vacation the next day.
Just makes it happen really quickly. Right, So now calling.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
Warren Buffett becomes a feature of the American capitalist landscape
after this, Right, this is a great moment phone history.
Speaker 2 (37:54):
You'll have a big phone, a big red phone. That's
his Buffet on it.
Speaker 1 (37:57):
Right.
Speaker 2 (37:58):
So, now the pieces are in place, got money coming
in from National Indemnity, a few other insurance like companies,
You've got the mills, You've got all these different investments
he has in different small companies.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
Right.
Speaker 2 (38:11):
And Buffett call this the golden age of capital allocation.
And what he means is, if you have enough different
businesses putting off different amounts of money, you can direct
that money to where it's going to make the most
difference and make the most return. He's essentially this self
funding machine at this point. He doesn't need investors to
(38:33):
come and he doesn't have to beg or borrow money
for his companies. He just has to move the streams
of money around. And he is about to hit the
nineteen seventies, which was a terrible economic time in America,
where there's a huge recession, the prices of companies go down,
and somebody, well, Warren Buffet, because that's what we're talking about.
(38:54):
And Warren Buffett has the cash and the confidence to
go wild in the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 1 (39:02):
So the bad stock market is just what he needs.
Speaker 2 (39:06):
It's exactly what he needs, and he takes stakes in
the Washington Post. He buys more Geico, he bought National Presto.
I built the names of these companies, which makes pressure
cookers and popcorn poppers.
Speaker 1 (39:19):
I love that.
Speaker 2 (39:19):
I love that he puts a big stake into Pinkerton's
detective agency, A little.
Speaker 1 (39:25):
Weird that I'm important in the business history in their
own way.
Speaker 2 (39:29):
By the end of nineteen seventies, Buffet's worth around one
hundred million dollars, right, and it's all under this umbrella
of Berkshire Hathaway. They don't make fabric anymore. They just
make well popcorn makers.
Speaker 1 (39:39):
They make money.
Speaker 2 (39:39):
They make money, right. And so this is the point
that I would say, young Warren Buffett has become essentially
the investor that we see today. Not a collector of
cigar butts, not like making these tiny little plays to
get some money back from these companies, but an owner
of big American companies that he thinks are at great
(40:02):
prices that he likes to hold and do the capital
allocation thing. So it's around this time, late sixties, early
seventies when he starts to appear.
Speaker 1 (40:12):
In the newspapers, right in the magazines.
Speaker 2 (40:14):
Forbes wrote an article called how Omaha Beats Wall Street.
I'm sure everyone's like, what is this about? And it
talked about Buffett's investment firm, which had been running about
twelve years at this point after he left Benjamin Graham,
and he said they had never lost money in this time.
Ten thousand dollars had been turned into a quarter of
a million dollars and if.
Speaker 1 (40:36):
You'd invested ten thousand at the beginning, yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:39):
And it was the first sort of articles that started
to talk about the Buffet weirdness right that, Oh he
lives in a small house, like he drives a small car,
Like he's a big deal in Omaha, but nobody knows him.
Speaker 1 (40:49):
He eats like a six year old boy.
Speaker 2 (40:51):
He just likes hamburgers and French fries and that's pretty
much all he eat, Cherry coke and Cherry Coke's before
the cook. You're right, oh, young Buffett. And one of
the reasons why I wanted to tell the story is that,
like that was really this like rare moment, both in
American finance and for Buffett himself. This idea that like
(41:12):
there were such vast misspricings and so little information in
the stock market that someone with his particular personality could
end up making this huge amount of money. Of course,
you'd go on to make billions and billions and billions
and billions that would dwarf this, but this was the
important part that the weird kid had his moment. Now,
(41:36):
of course, there's no end to the amount of information
you can get about all these companies, all these stocks,
and there's a million people well first of all that
read everything Warmbuffn't writes, and that want to do what
he does. Pour over you know, returns and how much
inventory do they have, and like, you know, what's their
working capital and all these tiny little measures of how
well a company is doing. They're doing the same thing
(41:56):
and so it's harder to do that. Yeah, Warm Buffet
has moved on.
Speaker 1 (41:59):
You have to go farther Afield, right. Actually, what I
think of here is Jane Street. You know Jane Street, Right,
It's it's this little trading firm owned by the people
who work there. They're all super smart math people, and
like the most recent time they were in the news,
it was because they had figured out that in the
Indian stock market you could make some weird move where
if you bought the options and the stock, you could
(42:22):
make prices move it away. That was like basically a
guaranteed profit, right. Like that actually seems kind of Buffet esque,
even though it doesn't have the like, oh, fundamental Grandpa
Buffet that's the later Buffet. It has the like, I'm
really into details and I'm going to look all over
the world for some financial detail that is going to
make me a book. I feel like that's the twenty
(42:43):
twenty five version of it.
Speaker 2 (42:44):
Yeah, and or even high speed trading that is finds
a mispricing that occurs in a millisecond and taking advantage.
Speaker 1 (42:50):
So now it happens with math. Right now, That kind
of move in the US markets, as far as I
can tell, rarely happens with reading the financial reports, and
it usually happens with math.
Speaker 2 (43:01):
With quants, yes, and they do not show up on
the weekend to meet with CEOs. Their machines do it
for their machines talk to each other. I mean, that's
the big picture, you know, finance. Successful strategies don't last
for long. You can only pull the young Buffett trick
one or two times and then you got to become.
Speaker 1 (43:20):
Old Buffett next time. On Business History, a show about
the history of business, how does Warren Buffett find a
new edge? How does a guy in the business of
ensuring lion tamers and buying up bus companies manage to
make a hundred billion dollars in an era dominated by technology.
(43:40):
It's not going to be easy.
Speaker 2 (43:42):
Our producer is Gabriel Hunter Chang, our engineer is Sarah Bruguier,
and our showrunner is Ryan Dilly. I'm Jacob Goldstein, and
I'm Robert Smith. We'll be back next week with another
episode of
Speaker 1 (43:51):
Business History, a show about the history wait for it,
of business
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