17 Facts About Warren Buffett

[Parsad]

Nothing new, but always fun to see the size and scope of what he's accomplished.  Cheers!

 

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/warren-buffett-facts-about-his-wealth-193006548.html

[Guest hellsten]

Counterintuitive fact of the day:

99% of Buffett's wealth was earned after his 50th birthday.

Buffett made $62.7 billion of his $63.3 billion net worth after his 50th birthday. $60 billion — nearly 95% — is from after his 60th birthday. Talk about long-term investment strategies.

 

Hope he's enjoying his wealth. I heard he's tap dancing to work.

[sigis]

I could never understand comparing somebody's net worth to GDP. GDP is a measure of income, not net worth.

[frugalchief]

Counterintuitive fact of the day:

99% of Buffett's wealth was earned after his 50th birthday.

Buffett made $62.7 billion of his $63.3 billion net worth after his 50th birthday. $60 billion — nearly 95% — is from after his 60th birthday. Talk about long-term investment strategies.

 

It's inspiring to prove the power of compounding over decades.

[giofranchi]

I could never understand comparing somebody's net worth to GDP. GDP is a measure of income, not net worth.

 

I think GDP is also a measure of how broad the economy you are operating in actually is. And I guess the basic idea follows: the broader the economy you are operating in, the more opportunities you get to accumulate wealth. Therefore you cannot compare Rockefeller’s $1 billion wealth with Buffett’s $63 billion wealth, unless you have some measure to put those two numbers in their respective right contexts.

You might argue the net worth of a nation should be used as a more accurate measure… but I guess the net worth of the US is simply much more difficult to assess with the same level of accuracy than its GDP.

Finally, you can also look at it through the P/S ratio lens: we are used to value the net worth of a company as a multiple of its sales. The same logic could therefore be applied to the net worth of a nation. But, being a relative comparison, of course the multiple could be ignored: you are then left with sales only, in other words GDP. ;)

 

Gio

 

[Ham Hockers]

I could never understand comparing somebody's net worth to GDP. GDP is a measure of income, not net worth.

 

Yep, stock vs flows. Most people don't really care or get the distinction, though.