[Music] in 1942 80 years ago I took $14.75 every penny I'd say and I bought three shares of City service preferred and City service is a pretty wellknown name now and then waren Buffett the man with a net worth of over $100 billion has a story to share here's what he did when I was when I was 11 I picked stocks I had the whole wrong idea I I I was interested in watching stocks and I thought stocks were things that went up and down and I charted them I read books on technical analysis I
read I I read Edwards and McGee I think that was the classic then I hundreds and hundred hundreds of pages and I read that whole thing over and over again I read Garfield RW I read everything and I thought the first eight years I thought the important thing was to predict what a stock would do and predict the stock market and then I read Ben Graham you know when I was 19 or 20 and I realized that that I was doing it exactly the wrong way and but didn't hurt that I had that background and
everything I I rejiggered my mind in when I read the book The intelligent investor and at from that point I never bought another stock I bought businesses that happen to be be publicly traded but I became an owner of a business and I did not I did not care whether a stock went up or down the next day or the next week or the next month or the next year and I didn't have any idea what it would do I didn't know what the stock market would do but I knew businesses to have success in
the long run you've got to love what you do Buffett believes that finding your passion and sticking to it is the key to success by doing what you love you'll have the motivation to keep going even when things get tough I'm a bright guy who's terribly interested in what he does so I've spent a lifetime doing it I've surrounded my PE myself with people that bring out the best in me and you don't need to be a genesus in what I do that's the good thing about it if I went into physics or I a
whole lot of other subjects I'm being also R but I am in a game that you don't need you probably need 120 points of IQ you know but you but 170 doesn't do any better than 120 it may do worse probably do worse but but uh you don't really need brains you need the right orientation you know 90% of the people prob to figure out the ER but 90% of the people that buy stocks don't think of them the right way they think about something they hope goes up next week and they think about the
market as something they hope goes up and if it's down they feel worse I feel better and I hope it goes down when I buy it because I'll buy more I try to keep my competitive exp in a game where I can win I do know this when I want to do something I always want to do it big I put my whole net worth in City service preferred you know March 11th 1942 I have never had less than 80% of my money in America business you can call them stocks but I see him as
American Business Buffett's success Speaks For Itself by investing in strong stable businesses over the long term he became one of the richest people in the world I I've owned a piece of American Business for at least 80% at all times in you know I I just I don't want to own anything else I I want to own a home and you know things my family wants and all that but owning five homes doesn't mean anything to me because I'm be happy in one home and there's a certain amount of things that go wrong with everything
and if I got two homes i' I know I've got more problems and I don't have more happiness I would have to be honestly say that the that what makes me happiest is what I'm doing what I'm doing I enjoy two things about it one I know I'll win over time doesn't mean I'll beat everybody else or anything like that but I I I mean the game is very very very easy if you have the right lessons in your mind about what you're buying I'm not buying stocks I'm this is a overwhelmingly American Business uh
and I'm happy when that's happy when that's uh when I'm doing it I'm happy when stocks are going down I'm happier when stocks are going down because I I can buy more of them with the same amount of money I'd be happy if I was a farmer I'd want Farmland to go down uh so I could buy more acreage you know if I was I me it just makes sense and I'll tell you the second thing I really like I like being I like being trusted by people and you know I like I would rather
do what I do with Partners than do it sitting in a room myself even though I might make more money that way I need to know that I think the birchway is going to be worth more money someday down the road not tomorrow I want it to go down if I'm buying something uh you know and uh I would say this uh the world has changed a lot since that report was written but the world changed a lot in 2002 years ago Let's Pretend there is no stock market let's say I had to buy these
privately like could buy a farm privately like could buy an apartment house private they're Investments so you're looking to say what can I I do with money I've saved to put it away so I feel good about getting it back later under any circumstances but not necessarily on a given moment but if I have a farm it's going to take me a while but I I it is people would be so much better if they if they actually didn't have a stock market in terms of buying businesses but you know and when you're buying businesses
don't don't call them stocks when you're buying businesses when you're buying apartment houses sometimes when you're buying raw land you know all kinds of things there are times there are times when you get a chance to act and do something really intelligent may may happen once every 10 years or once every 20 years depends on what field you're in where you live what you know all of that but most of the important things there's a lot of foundational work United States economy and it's very easy to look at the statistics on it I mean more
people a greater percentage of the American population is is uh wealthy now or having more income now than they've ever had and if you look at whether Bank of America give you their average deposit I mean you you just look at the wealth and that uh and uh that doesn't mean everybody's wealthy but it does mean relative to any other period of time U people have more money now they have they have they get mortgages at lower rates than they've ever gotten so if they want to buy where the bottom 2% in terms of income
in the United States 5% and for sure the top 1% all live better than John de rockerfeller was living when I was six years old johy rockerfeller was the richest man in the world and today you can get better medicine better education better entertainment better transportation you can do everything better than he could you can I mean it it's astounding that's in my lifetime that there if if you want to if you wanted to watch a football game you still had to go there and I can sit there with this big screen and they keep
showing me the replay so that explaining to me what happened and everything and maybe everybody doesn't have a screen as big as mine but damn near everybody has a screen or an iPhone or a computer or access to one and they have access I mean when I was born you know the dentist didn't use novade there's no country that's done what our country's done in seven if you go back three of my lifetimes you're looking are looking at less than 1% of the world's population closer to half of 1% half a 1% of the people
in the world are sitting in this land they don't work harder than people in all the rest of the world I mean you in terms of hours of unpleasant labor everybody's got hours of pleasant labor in those days practically they don't have they don't come Laden with gold and you know they are half of 1% and they work the same hours they got the same IQs they may be a little self- selected in terms of Enterprise in terms of going across oceans and things and fast forward a couple of lifetimes and they've got 20% plus
of all the bounty in the world I mean that is that is something that has worked like nothing just imagine that if you gone to anybody constitutional Congress and you know in 1789 if you go to any one of the representatives there there and you said I want to tell you what this place is going to look like you know in three more of your lifetimes you're great great grandchildren great great grandchildren yeah are going to be flying in the skies they're going to be watching sports all over the world they're going to be entertained
and medicine they they'd have hold you off to a Lunatic Society when Thomas Edison did all the things he did you know he made some money but look we better I mean we're using it yeah it belongs to us and it doesn't if you take what an hour of Labor delivered to you a 100 years ago and what an hour of Labor delivers to you now for you and your family it's unbelievable
