A cold Saturday in January 1951.
A 20-year-old business school student took a train to Washington and stood outside a building. The doors were locked.
He had come to meet his idol. In Who’s Who in America, he’d found out that his teacher, Graham, was chairman of an insurance company called GEICO. He knew nothing about insurance, but he came anyway.
He kept knocking until a security guard came out, looking puzzled. He asked, “Is there anyone inside who can talk with me?” The guard said there might be someone working late on the sixth floor.
That person on the sixth floor was Davidson, an assistant to the president. He spent about four hours talking with this unfamiliar student: how insurance companies made money, how GEICO sold directly to customers, and how its costs were far lower than those of competitors who relied on agents.
That year, the student bought GEICO shares in four separate purchases. By year-end, they accounted for more than 65% of his net worth.
Then he made a mistake: in 1952, he sold all of them for $15,259 and switched to a stock that looked cheaper. Over the next 20 years, the shares he’d sold would have grown to about $1.3 million.
In 1995, Berkshire paid $2.3 billion to buy the other half of GEICO.
That student was Buffett. He wrote in a letter: “If not for that cold Saturday, Berkshire could never have become what it is today.”
Have you ever sold something too soon, only to watch it go up dozens of times afterward?
$BTC $ETH #BinanceSquare
A 20-year-old business school student took a train to Washington and stood outside a building. The doors were locked.
He had come to meet his idol. In Who’s Who in America, he’d found out that his teacher, Graham, was chairman of an insurance company called GEICO. He knew nothing about insurance, but he came anyway.
He kept knocking until a security guard came out, looking puzzled. He asked, “Is there anyone inside who can talk with me?” The guard said there might be someone working late on the sixth floor.
That person on the sixth floor was Davidson, an assistant to the president. He spent about four hours talking with this unfamiliar student: how insurance companies made money, how GEICO sold directly to customers, and how its costs were far lower than those of competitors who relied on agents.
That year, the student bought GEICO shares in four separate purchases. By year-end, they accounted for more than 65% of his net worth.
Then he made a mistake: in 1952, he sold all of them for $15,259 and switched to a stock that looked cheaper. Over the next 20 years, the shares he’d sold would have grown to about $1.3 million.
In 1995, Berkshire paid $2.3 billion to buy the other half of GEICO.
That student was Buffett. He wrote in a letter: “If not for that cold Saturday, Berkshire could never have become what it is today.”
Have you ever sold something too soon, only to watch it go up dozens of times afterward?
$BTC $ETH #BinanceSquare