Becoming Berkshire: 1930-1949 An Oracle is Born

Issue 1| 1930-1949—This issue introduces our main character, Warren Buffett, as we gain insight into the person who would later become the Oracle of Omaha.

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I started Becoming Berkshire over a year ago; this was the first issue released. Given the much larger base of subscribers, I decided to rerelease my earliest issues.

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Warren Edward Buffett was born on August 30th, 1930, nearly ten months after the infamous Black Tuesday Wall Street crash, where the market dropped $14 billion in a single day. The 1930s in the United States began with a historic low: more than 15 million Americans—fully one-quarter of all wage-earning workers—were unemployed. President Herbert Hoover did not do much to alleviate the crisis: Patience and self-reliance, he argued, were all Americans needed to get them through this "passing incident in our national lives." The Dow Jones Industrial Average Index ('"Dow Jones"), often seen as a critical measure of broader economic health, opened at 244.30 in 1930 and fell 33.77% to 157.51 by year-end.

From an early age, son of Howard and Leila Stahl Buffett, Warren was fascinated with collecting, counting, and memorizing. He would record the license plate numbers of passing cars, calculate the life span of Hymm composers and horse racing odds, and memorize baseball statistics and city populations. However, Warren’s most immense love was money. At ten years of age, Warren announced he would be a millionaire at age 35 ($20 million in 2023), an outlandish statement from a kid who grew up during the Great Depression.

For the Love of Money

Ages Six-Ten (1936-1940)

One of his earliest prized possessions was a nickel-coated money changer that he would strap to his belt while he sold Chicklets and lemonade.

“I had this little green tray… It had containers for five different brands of gums. I would buy packs of gum from my grandfather and go door to door in the neighborhood selling this stuff."¹ If a customer wanted only one stick of gum out of the pack of five, he would refuse. “We don’t break up packs of gum — I mean, I’ve got my principles. I still, to this day, remember Mrs. Macoubrie saying she wanted one stick. They were a nickel and she wanted to spend a penny with me.” ²