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The Remarkable Early Years of Warren Buffett

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For most people, the “Oracle of Omaha” needs no introduction. With a self-made net worth of $84 billion, some experts consider the 87-year-old to be the greatest investor of all-time.

Despite his incredible achievements and decades in the public eye, the modest Midwesterner is frugal, relatable, and full of humility – and his life story is an endless source of lessons to aspiring business professionals around the world.

The Warren Buffett Series

Part 1: The Early Years

Today’s infographic, which is done in partnership with finder.com, is Part 1 of the Warren Buffett Series, a five-part biographical series about the legendary investor.

The Warren Buffet Series: The Early YearsInside Warren Buffett's BrainPart 3Warren Buffett's Biggest Wins and FailsBest Buffett Quotes

The Warren Buffett Series: The Early Years
Note: Stay tuned for future parts with our free mailing list.

The young Warren Buffett was clearly a special kid. He ran his first “business” when he was five years old, and he invested in his first stock when he was 11. Buffett even managed to emerge from high school richer than his teachers.

But what lessons can we learn from Buffett’s prolific childhood – and how did his experiences as a young man shape him into the magnate we know today?

From Numbers to Dollar Signs

Even for someone as gifted and focused as Buffett, a serendipitous insight played a crucial role in charting his future course.

During a visit to the New York Stock Exchange when he was 10 years old, the sight of a young man rolling custom, handmade cigars on the floor made an outsized impact on him. In particular, Buffett realized that such a job couldn’t exist without massive amounts of money flowing through the stock market.

This unexpected epiphany planted the seed for stocks in his brain, and Warren’s long fascination with numbers soon shifted towards dollars.

The Buffett Growth Mindset

Warren Buffett famously spends 80% of his day reading – and the written word was just as important to his younger self. As a lad, one book that caught Buffett’s eye was One Thousand Ways to Make $1,000 by F.C. Minaker

Specifically, the book showed Buffett how $1,000 could compound over time – and that the earlier you had money working for you, the better.

An important lesson from the book? There’s a massive difference in returns between 60 and 70 year compound interest scenarios. In other words, annualized returns are just one part of the equation – but how long the money compounds is the other crucial part. This is a big part of the reason why Warren Buffett got started early.

Warren Buffett’s First Stock

Through his various activities, Buffett had $120 saved by age 11. Naturally, he invested it in a stock, co-investing his sister’s money. They each bought three shares of Cities Service Preferred for $38.25 each.

The share price promptly dropped to $27, but Buffett waited it out. When it got to $40, he sold to net a small profit – however, the stock soon after went all the way to $202!

Warren calls this one of the most important moments in his life, and he learned three lessons:

  1. Don’t overly fixate on what he paid for the stock
  2. Don’t rush unthinkingly to grab a small profit. He could have made $492 if he was more patient
  3. He didn’t want to have responsibility for anyone else’s money unless he was sure he could succeed

These important lessons would eventually tie in well to his value investing philosophy.

Odd Jobs

The young Buffett wasn’t afraid to try new things to build up his capital. He collected golf balls, sold peanuts and popcorn, sold gum and Coca-Cola, and even created tipsheets for horse races on a typewriter.

Some of his stranger endeavors? He launched Buffett’s Approval Service and sold stamps to collectors around the country, and he also launched Buffett’s Showroom Shine – a car shining business that didn’t last too long.

Warren’s Work Ethic

By the end of high school, Buffett had launched multiple businesses, sold thousands of golf balls, read at least 100 books on business, and hawked 600,000 newspapers.

This hard work led to him having a fortune of $5,000 by high school graduation time, the equivalent of $55,000 in today’s currency. He even owned land at this point, after buying 40 acres of Nebraska farmland with his newspaper profits.

Knocked Off Course

After high school, Buffett decided he was a shoe-in for Harvard. He knew it would be stimulating for him intellectually, and that the famed business school would allow him to develop a strong network.

The only problem? He got rejected.

Instead of letting this get to him, he discovered Benjamin Graham’s book The Intelligent Investor and fell in love. It was the methodical investing framework he needed, and he would later call it the “best book about investing ever written”.

Buffett would soon be accepted at Columbia Business School, where Benjamin Graham and David Dodd taught finance. Graham became Buffett’s idol, and his second-biggest influence behind his own father.

Other Notes

Part 2 of the Warren Buffett Series will be released in early January 2018.

Credits: This infographic would not be possible without the great biographies done by Roger Lowenstein (Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist) and Alice Schroeder (The Snowball), as well as numerous other sources cataloging Buffett’s life online.

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Investor Education

Visualized: A Step-by-Step Guide to Tax-Loss Harvesting

In Canada, tax-loss harvesting allows investors to turn losses into tax savings. This graphic breaks down how it works in four simple steps.

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An illustrative graphic showing part of the steps in tax-loss harvesting, including selling a $50,000 investment with a $10,000 loss.

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The following content is sponsored by Fidelity Investments

A Step-by-Step Guide to Tax-Loss Harvesting

Market ups and downs can be unnerving, but the good news is that tax-loss harvesting allows investors in Canada to capture tax savings when their portfolio drops in value.

While it sounds complicated, a tax-loss harvesting strategy is actually fairly straightforward. An investor can use capital losses to offset capital gains found elsewhere in their portfolio, leading to a lower tax bill. While there are important conditions to keep in mind, investors can use this strategy to enhance portfolio returns over time by reinvesting these tax savings.

This graphic from Fidelity Investments shows how tax-loss harvesting works and why it may improve tax efficiency in an investor’s portfolio.

Breaking It Down

Consider a person who invested $50,000 in a mutual fund held in a non-registered account that has dropped by $10,000 in value. To help minimize losses, they took the following steps in a tax-loss harvesting strategy.

For the sake of this example, taxes are based on the maximum federal rate and the average maximum provincial tax rate.

  1. Sold investment with a $10,000 loss
  2. Invested $40,000 into a different mutual fund
  3. Used the $10,000 capital loss to offset capital gains realized elsewhere in the non-registered portfolio
  4. Achieved up to $2,550 in tax savings

The investor realized as much as $2,550 in tax savings by utilizing a $10,000 loss against a $10,000 capital gain. Without tax-loss harvesting, this $10,000 capital gain would be taxed at a 50% capital gains inclusion rate ($10,000 X 50% = $5,000). This $5,000 in applicable gains is then taxed at a 51% combined federal and provincial tax rate ($5,000 X 51% = $2,550 in taxes owed).

In contrast, by using tax-loss harvesting, the investor would have achieved up to $2,550 in tax savings.

What’s more, you can reinvest your tax savings over each year—which may help boost portfolio returns over time if the new investment increases in value.

Tax-Loss Harvesting Tips

With a tax-loss harvesting strategy, here are some key tips and considerations to keep in mind:

  • Investment Timeline: A capital loss can be used to offset capital gains not only in the current year, but in the three years prior and/or any year indefinitely in the future.
  • New Investment Type: After selling an investment that’s dropped in value, it’s important to buy a different investment to avoid triggering the ‘superficial loss rule’. Investors can aim to choose an investment with similar long-term returns.
  • Plan for Year-End: In order to achieve a capital loss, plan to sell an investment at least two to three days before the year’s final trading day so the investment settles before year-end.

Together, these tips can help investors strategically execute a tax-loss harvesting strategy.

Tax Made Easier

During volatile markets, investors can seize the opportunity to turn losses into tax savings using tax-loss harvesting as a key tool to help generate higher after-tax returns.

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Explore Fidelity’s tax calculator to discover tax-saving opportunities.

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