Warren Edward Buffett was born on August 30, 1930, in Omaha, Nebraska. His father, Howard, was a stockbroker and later a congressman. By the time Warren was 6, he was buying six-packs of Coca-Cola for 25 cents and selling individual bottles for 5 cents each — a 20% markup. By 11, he had bought his first stock. By 13, he was filing a tax return that included a $35 deduction for the bicycle he used for his paper route.
The math was always obvious to him in a way it wasn't to most people. He didn't find it interesting that money grew when invested — he found it strange that most people didn't seem to find that interesting, and stranger still that they didn't do anything about it.
The question, across 80 years of investing, has always been the same: when the crowd is doing something, is Buffett right to do the opposite — or is Buffett wrong and the crowd correct?
He has been right more often than anyone in recorded financial history.
Buffett has saved $120. He buys 3 shares of Cities Service preferred stock at $38 each. The stock drops to $27. He's lost 30% of his savings. His sister Doris — who also bought shares on his recommendation — is upset. He can sell and cut the loss, or hold. What does he do?
Buffett applied to Harvard Business School in 1950. He was rejected in a brief interview — the interviewer reportedly said he looked too young. This was both a humiliation and a pivot.
He had read Benjamin Graham's book, The Intelligent Investor, the previous year. He considered it the best book ever written on investing. He discovered that Graham taught at Columbia Business School. He applied. He was the only student Graham ever gave an A+ to.
After Columbia, Graham offered him a job at his investment partnership in New York. Buffett desperately wanted it. Graham initially declined — saying he reserved Wall Street jobs for Jewish analysts who couldn't get hired elsewhere due to discrimination — then relented and offered Buffett a position.
Buffett worked for Graham for two years. Then Graham retired and closed the partnership. Buffett was 26, with nowhere to go.
Harvard Business School has rejected Buffett. What does he do?
Graham had closed his partnership. Buffett was 26. He had worked for the best investor in America. He could have stayed in New York, joined another firm, built a career in the world's financial capital.
He moved back to Omaha.
His friends and family thought this was strange. Omaha was not where investment managers built reputations. Buffett's explanation was simple: he could think more clearly in Omaha. New York produced noise. Omaha produced nothing but time to read and think.
He founded the Buffett Partnership with $105,100 — his $100 plus investments from family members. He charged no management fee. He took 25% of profits above a 6% annual return. He ran it from his house.
Buffett has worked for Graham and the partnership has closed. He can stay in New York — join a firm, build a network, be near the market. Or he can move back to Omaha and start his own fund. What does he do?
By 1969, the U.S. stock market had been climbing for years. Stocks that Buffett could find at obvious discounts to their intrinsic value were becoming impossible to find. The market was no longer cheap.
Buffett faced a choice that no investment manager of his stature had ever made voluntarily: close the partnership, return all money to investors, and wait — potentially years — for undervaluation to return.
He had partners who were counting on the partnership. He had fees he was earning. He had a reputation built on consistent outperformance. The pressure to stay invested — even at elevated valuations — was enormous.
Buffett cannot find undervalued stocks. The market is expensive. He can stay invested anyway — take lower returns rather than no returns — or close the partnership and return cash to investors. What does he do?
See's Candies was a California candy company with a strong brand, loyal customers, and a peculiar economic property: it could raise prices every year without losing customers. Its profits were not spectacular, but they were reliable and growing.
The asking price was $25 million. By the standards of Benjamin Graham's value investing — buy at a significant discount to tangible assets — See's was expensive. Its tangible book value was $8 million. Buffett would be paying three times book value for the brand and the pricing power.
Graham would not have bought it. Charlie Munger, Buffett's new partner, thought they should. Buffett had never paid this kind of premium for anything.
See's Candies is available for $25 million — three times its tangible book value. Graham's framework says it's too expensive. Munger says the brand and pricing power make it worth it. What does Buffett do?
On October 19, 1987 — Black Monday — the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 22.6% in a single day. It remains the largest single-day percentage decline in stock market history. Investors who had been heavily in equities lost a fifth of their wealth in hours.
The panic was total. Television showed traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange looking as though they were watching a disaster in slow motion. Volume was at record levels. The phone lines to brokerages were jammed with sell orders.
Buffett did nothing. Then, the next day, he bought more Coca-Cola.
The Dow has dropped 22% in a single day. Every indicator says a crash is underway. Buffett holds significant positions in equities. What does he do?
In 1999, the internet bubble was at its peak. Technology stocks were rising 100%, 200%, 300% in months. Amazon, Pets.com, Webvan, Cisco, Intel — every tech stock seemed to defy gravity. Analysts on television were naming price targets that assumed infinite growth forever.
Berkshire Hathaway's stock price declined by 19.9% in 1999. The S&P 500 was up 21%. Warren Buffett was being openly mocked. Barron's published a cover story titled "What's Wrong, Warren?" Forbes published a column arguing that Buffett had "lost his touch" and didn't understand the new economy.
He didn't buy a single internet stock.
Berkshire is down 20% while tech stocks are up triple digits. The financial press says Buffett has lost his touch. He doesn't understand the new economy. He has the capital to participate. What does he do?
Warren Buffett still lives in the house he bought in 1958 in Omaha, Nebraska, for $31,500. He still eats at the same diner. He still drinks multiple Coca-Colas a day. He is, at this writing, the sixth-richest person in the world, with a net worth of approximately $130 billion, the large majority of which he has pledged to charity through the Giving Pledge.
He has given away more money than any individual in American history — over $50 billion, primarily to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and to his children's foundations.
He started investing at 11. He is still doing it at 94.
His most important quality is not his intelligence — there are smarter people who have made less money. It's not his work ethic — he reads for five to six hours a day, but many people work harder. It's not his network — he deliberately built one in Omaha rather than Wall Street.
It is his willingness to be wrong in public, for years, while being right in principle. The crowd is usually wrong at the extremes. Being right at the extremes requires being willing to be alone there. Most people find that intolerable. Buffett has found it comfortable for 80 years.
The definitive biography of Warren Buffett — tracing how a newspaper-delivering kid from Omaha became the world's greatest investor through patience, discipline, and 80 years of compounding.
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This simulator is part of ordinarymantrying.com — a blog about one ordinary person using AI to navigate investing, side hustles, and building things in public. All events are based on documented historical accounts of Warren Buffett's life.