The making of Warren Buffett

The man who “triumphed in the long game by practising a simpler, purer version of capitalism” is widely hailed as the world’s greatest living investor. How did he get to where he is today?

Warren Buffett © Rob Kinmonth/The LIFE Images Collection via Getty Images/Getty Images
© Getty
(Image credit: Warren Buffett © Rob Kinmonth/The LIFE Images Collection via Getty Images/Getty Images)

On the walls of Berkshire Hathaway’s offices, framed front pages from days of market panic, such as the 1929 crash, “serve as a reminder not to succumb to the passions of the moment”, says The New Yorker. Warren Buffett’s “ability to divorce himself from emotion” has always been part of his genius as an investor. And he hasn’t lost his head now. But he does seem to have lost his edge and is the first to admit it.

Asked last year which would be the better investment to put in a child’s account – a share in Berkshire Hathaway or a share in an S&P 500 tracker fund – Buffett didn’t hesitate, “I think the financial result would be very close to the same”. The statement, notes the FT, was made “without qualification”. Still, it’s hard not to wonder if Buffett, even at 89, is underplaying his ambitions. After all, he’s a PR genius too – “cultivating an aw-shucks, Midwest-wholesome image of a man who has triumphed in the long game by practising a simpler, purer version of capitalism”.

Subscribe to MoneyWeek

Subscribe to MoneyWeek today and get your first six magazine issues absolutely FREE

Get 6 issues free
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/mw70aro6gl1676370748.jpg

Sign up to Money Morning

Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter

Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter

Sign up

Jane writes profiles for MoneyWeek and is city editor of The Week. A former British Society of Magazine Editors editor of the year, she cut her teeth in journalism editing The Daily Telegraph’s Letters page and writing gossip for the London Evening Standard – while contributing to a kaleidoscopic range of business magazines including Personnel Today, Edge, Microscope, Computing, PC Business World, and Business & Finance.

She has edited corporate publications for accountants BDO, business psychologists YSC Consulting, and the law firm Stephenson Harwood – also enjoying a stint as a researcher for the due diligence department of a global risk advisory firm.

Her sole book to date, Stay or Go? (2016), rehearsed the arguments on both sides of the EU referendum.

She lives in north London, has a degree in modern history from Trinity College, Oxford, and is currently learning to play the drums.