Wow, that's an average 26% per year increase (for the non-inflation-adjusted data) over a 70 year timespan. That's definitely not a random walk down wall street [1]. For reference, Dow Jones seems to have about 7% per year for the same time period.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Random_Walk_Down_Wall_Street" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Random_Walk_Down_Wall_Street</a>
To me the biggest anomaly here is the four year period from 1956 to 1960, 26 to 30, when Buffet <i>octupled</i> his net worth from $1M to $8M. Plenty of silicon valley engineers will have a net worth of $1M, but I think few make it to $8M. What was Buffet doing during those magical 4 years?
I remember going through some of my refrence books. I was deciding which one's to toss. I opened Encyclopedia of Psychiatry (vol. 1 and 2).<p>The first page I flipped to said, "A man of 50 will not make anymore money than he is currently making in his life." It was just so specific, or I I got the quote wrong? I recall looking at it a few times. It was personally depressing because I was broke, and hitting 50.<p>To this day, I think about that sentance, supposedly extrapolated from years of statistics.<p>Well, even though most of the wealthy people I have pesonally interacted with had the likability factor of a boat anchor; Warren Buffet seems like one of the wealthy the others should try to emulate. He is one of the guys I secretly root for.
Buffett's net worth at 14 was $5k. I just checked my old childhood savings account, and after my 14th birthday it had around £50 in it.<p>At 34, his net worth was $7M, so relatively speaking, I only need £70k to be doing about as well as he was.<p>I think I'm actually doing better. :-)
Buffet's approach of combining high leverage with low growth 'value' equities is a large part of his great performance. This is not to say there isn't a skill in noticing the benefits of this approach and convincing creditors and investors to let you take on all the debt, but a surprisingly small proportion of these gains are due to stock picking.<p><a href="http://xqdoc.imedao.com/150c22613c69373fe2602a80.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://xqdoc.imedao.com/150c22613c69373fe2602a80.pdf</a>
> Comparing yourself to others and especially to the best performer ever in your skill/expertise is unhealthy. Don’t compare yourself to others.<p>And yet here I am anyway, nearing almost 30, still in graduate school, wondering if I'll ever know what it's like to have a reasonable amount in savings, let alone a "net worth" :)
I've only started caring about money a couple of years ago, so no point comparing 14-year old me with anyone in terms of money.<p>What gets me is how much more creative successful people were when they were young. Fishing and re-selling golf balls? Pinball business?? When I was 14 I was too busy with computer games.
It's interesting to read about his career to see what he did to build his wealth. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Buffett#Business_career" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Buffett#Business_career</a>
The most interesting thing is that y-axis is exponential. iIts humbling that Buffet didn't even crossed 100M mark when he was 40! While wealth accumulation seems to be exponential, it's sure a long winding road.
These days doesn't he transfer quite a bit (5%ish ?) into Gates' trust every year? Does that still count as 'his' for the purposes of this graph or is it deducted?
Insider trading is not illegal <a href="http://cnbc.com/id/43471561" rel="nofollow">http://cnbc.com/id/43471561</a>