Warren Buffett: From Pinball Hustler to the Oracle of Omaha

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At 14, Warren Buffett filed his first income tax return and claimed a $35 deduction for wear on his bicycle and watch, the tools of his paper route. This episode follows that habit of precise accounting through a lifetime of compounding. He sold gum and Coca-Cola door to door at seven, bought a 40 acre farm at 14, and ran pinball machines in Omaha barber shops at 15. Rejected by Harvard Business School, he went to Columbia to study under Benjamin Graham, who taught him intrinsic value and the margin of safety.

The story then turns to Berkshire Hathaway, a dying New England textile maker that Buffett took over in 1965 after management shaved an eighth of a point off a promised tender offer. With Charlie Munger's push toward great businesses at fair prices, he rebuilt the shell as a holding company powered by insurance float. The episode also covers his 2008 rescue deals, his late turn to Apple, the controversies, and his retirement at 95.

• After learning Graham sat on the Geico board, Buffett took a Saturday train to Washington, got a janitor to let him in, and spent hours questioning a vice president about insurance.
• Buffett calls the textile purchase his worst trade, yet the float from insurance premiums became an interest-free pool of capital for buying companies like Coca-Cola in 1988.
• During the 2008 crisis he put billions into Goldman Sachs and General Electric through preferred stock with guaranteed dividends.
• A Berkshire subsidiary paid a $92 million settlement over reinsurance deals with AIG, and a 2023 ProPublica report on leaked IRS data alleged personal trades in stocks Berkshire was also trading.
• He still lives in the Omaha house he bought in 1958 for $31,500, pledged 99 percent of his fortune to charity in 2006, and later redirected his giving to his three children's foundations.