Warren Buffett doesn’t generally do share tips and certainly not short-term share tips, but when he buys into a company people sit up and take notice. The fact that he has been buying recently - GE, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo - is taken by many people that we may be nearing a bottom in the markets.
Yesterday he gave an exclusive 1 hour interview to Charlie Rose, to see what he has to say check out Charlie Rose
Warren Buffett
Warren Buffett aka The Oracle of Omaha aka The Sage of Omaha was born Warren Edward Buffett on August 30, 1930, in Omaha, Nebraska. He is one of the richest men in the world and probably the most famous investor in the world. He is also a great American businessman and philanthropist. He has an estimated net worth of over $60 billion and was ranked by Forbes as the richest man in the world in February 2008, although it is quite probably, given the current state of stockmarkets worldwide, that this situation has changed.
Warren Buffett is also the largest shareholder and Chief Executive Officer of Berkshire Hathaway.
His success in the stockmarkets is legendary, and although he isn’t infallible, his curent net worth is ample proof that he gets it right more often than he gets it wrong. He is famous for his philosophy of ‘value investing’, buying companies that perform well and holding them for the very long-term (i.e. decades). Over time the markets go up, so holding on to investments makes sense. Many best-selling books have been written about his investment method, one of the most popular of them being “How to Pick Stocks Like Warren Buffett”
In 2006 his annual salary was $100,000 which is tiny compared to what other CEOs pay themselves. He lives in the same house in Omaha that he bought for $31,500 back in 1958. The house is valued today at around $700,000 (again not enormous for a man of his wealth)
He is also a well-known philanthropist. In 2006, he announced that he would be giving his enormous fortune away to charity, with 83% of it earmarked for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. In June 2006 he donated approximately 10,000,000 Berkshire Hathaway Class B shares to the Bill and Melinda Gates’ Foundation, worth approximately $30.7 billion at the time. The largest charitable donation ever made. The plan is that the Foundation shall receive 5% of the donation each year in July.
In 2007, Time included Warren Buffett among the 100 Most Influential People in The World.
He famously filed his first income tax return when he was 13 and deducted his bicycle as a work expense for $35.
He married Susan Thompson in 1952 and they remained married until her death in 2004, although they lived separately from 1977 onwards. In 2006 he married his long-time companion Astrid Menks. It was Susan Buffett who had brought about the meeting between Warren Buffett and Astrid Menks before she herself left to pursue her career as a singer.
He has three children but does not intend leaving a “significant proportion” of his wealth to them.
He is quoted as saying “I want to give my kids just enough so that they would feel that they could do anything, but not so much that they would feel like doing nothing.”