in Omaha, Warren enrolled at the University of Nebraska, and earned a bachelor's degree in one year taking 14 courses over two semesters. All that year, and even after graduating, most days Warren could be found in the library absorbing every book he could find on business and investing.7
Sometime in that summer of 1950 he found a copy of a newly published book by Benjamin Graham—The Intelligent Investor. More than any of the hundreds of books he had read, he regards this one as the book that changed his life.
It led him to start researching business schools, and later that same summer he discovered that Benjamin Graham and David Dodd, coauthors of the seminal work Security Analysis, were listed as professors at Columbia University. “I figured they were long since dead,” he said.8 So he quickly submitted an application to Columbia and was accepted. By September 1950 he was 1,200 miles away from Omaha, walking onto the New York City campus.
Warren's first class was Finance 111‐112, Investment Management and Security Analysis, taught by David Dodd.9 Before heading to New York, Warren had grabbed a copy of Security Analysis; by the time he got to Columbia, he had practically memorized it. “The truth was that I knew the book. At that time, literally, almost in those seven or eight hundred pages, I knew every example. I just sopped it up,” he said.10
When the spring semester began in 1951, Warren could hardly contain himself. His next class was taught by Benjamin Graham, a seminar that combined the teachings in Security Analysis and the lessons from The Intelligent Investor linked to actual stocks that were then trading in the market.
Graham's message was simple to understand but revolutionary in practice. Before Security Analysis, the common Wall Street approach to picking stocks was to begin with some overall opinion about a stock—do you like it or not—then to try to figure what other people might do with that stock—buy or sell it. The financial facts were largely overlooked. Ben Graham backed up the train. Before you throw money at a stock based upon nothing more than prevailing opinions, he argued, why not first figure out what it might be worth.
In the beginning, Graham's method was simple: Add up the company's current assets (account receivables, cash and securities), then subtract all its liabilities. That gives you the company's net worth. Then, and only then, look at the stock price. If the price was below the net assets, it was a worthwhile and potentially profitable purchase. But if the stock price was higher than the company's net worth, it wasn't worth investing. This approach fit comfortably into Warren's sense of numbers. Ben Graham had given him what he had been seeking for years—a systematic approach for investing: buy a dollar's worth of securities for 50 cents.
It has been said that for Warren, attending Columbia University was very much like the experience of someone emerging from a cave where he had lived all his life, stepping outside, blinking at the sunlight, perceiving truth and reality for the first time.11 Warren relished every moment of the experience. When not in class, he could be found in the Columbia library reading old newspapers about the stock market going back 20 years. He never stopped, seven days a week from early in the morning to late in the evening. Most wondered if he ever slept. At the end of the semester, Warren received an A+, the first time Graham had ever awarded that grade in his 22 years at Columbia University.
When school was over, Warren asked Graham about working at Graham‐Newman, the investment partnership Graham managed while teaching at Columbia. Graham turned him down. Warren offered to work for free. Again, a polite no thank you. So Warren returned to Omaha, determined to see what he could do on his own.
He was just turning 21 years old.
It Begins
When Warren arrived in Omaha the summer of 1951, his mind and energy were singularly focused on investing. He was no longer interested in part‐time jobs to make extra money. First Graham then Warren's father cautioned him that now was not the time to invest in the stock market. A correction was long overdue, both men warned. Warren heard only Minaker: “The way to begin making money is to begin.”
Warren was offered a job at the Omaha National Bank but he turned it down, preferring the familiarity of his father's firm, Buffett‐Falk & Company. A friend of Howard Buffett's asked if the name would soon become Buffett & Son; Warren replied, “Maybe Buffett & Father.”12
Warren threw his heart and soul into Buffett‐Falk & Company. He enrolled in the Dale Carnegie course for public speaking and was soon teaching “Investment Principles” at the University of Omaha; the lectures were based on Graham's book The Intelligent Investor. He wrote a column for The Commercial and Financial Chronicle under the headline “The Security I Like Best.” In it he touted one of Graham's favorite investments, a little‐known insurance company called Government Employees Insurance Co. (GEICO). Throughout this period, Warren maintained his relationship with Ben Graham and sent him stock ideas from time to time.
Then one day, in 1954, Graham called his former student with a job offer. Warren was on the next plane back to New York.
The two years Warren spent at Graham‐Newman were exhilarating but also frustrating. One of six employees, Warren shared an office with the legendary investors Walter Schloss and Tom Knapp. They spent their days pouring over the Standard & Poor's Stock Guide and pitching ideas for the Graham‐Newman mutual fund.
Graham and his partner Jerry Newman batted down most of their recommendations. When the Dow Jones Industrial Average hit 420 in 1955, the Graham Mutual Fund was sitting on $4 million in cash. No matter how compelling were Warren's stock picks, the door for investing at Graham‐Newman was closed. The only place for Warren's ideas was his own portfolio. The following year, 1956, Graham had enough. He retired and moved to Beverly Hills, California, where he continued to write and teach, this time at UCLA, until his death at the age of 82.
So Warren returned to Omaha for the second time, far different from the young graduate five years earlier. He was now older, more experienced, certainly wiser about investing, and definitely a lot richer. And he knew one thing for sure. He would never work for someone else again. He was ready to be his own captain.
Chapter Ten of One Thousand Ways to Make $1000 is titled “Selling Your Services.” The chapter begins by asking the reader to take a personal inventory. Figure out what you're good at, Minaker instructed, what you do better than anyone else. Then figure out who needs help with that and how best to reach them.
Through his teaching at the University of Omaha and his popular column on investing, Warren had already begun to build his reputation in Omaha; the time at Graham‐Newman only added to his credibility. So no sooner did he arrive in Omaha than family and friends pounced, asking him to manage their money. His sister Doris and her husband, his loving Aunt Alice, his father‐in‐law, his ex‐roommate Chuck Peterson, and local Omaha attorney Dan Monen—all wanted in. Collectively, in the spring of 1956 they gave Warren $105,000 to invest. Thus was born the investment partnership Buffett Associates, with Warren as general partner.
When everyone gathered for the kickoff meeting at a local Omaha dinner club, Warren set the tone. He handed each person the formal partnership agreement, assuring them there was nothing nefarious about the legalistic look of the agreement. Then with complete disclosure he set the ground rules for the partnership.
