valuevelli

Berkshire cost $3,900 a share the week this was filmed. It closed at $759,350 on Friday. The interviewer is George Goodman, who wrote under the pen name Adam Smith. He gets Buffett at 57, worth $2.1 billion, 8 months after the crash of October 19. Buffett explains valuation in 2 sentences. A bond prints the coupon on the paper. A business doesn't, so you print the number yourself. Then the receipts. The entire Washington Post Company on sale for $80 million while its properties were worth $400 million. He put in $9.7 million in 1973. By 1988 it was $370 million. GEICO: 42% of the company for $46 million, later worth $849 million. See's Candies cost $25 million and earned $30 million before tax in a single year. The part nobody quotes: in 1982 he wrote to Congressman John Dingell that stock index futures would be "overwhelmingly detrimental to our capital markets." Asked what a small investor should do about them, he says hope they make other people behave very silly, then step in occasionally. That was 44 years ago. Before 0DTE options, perps and prediction markets. He also refuses to leave his children money. An inherited fortune, he says, is a lifetime supply of food stamps with a trust officer for a caseworker. 99% goes back to society. He bought Nebraska Furniture Mart from a 94-year-old woman on a handshake. No audit. The tape sat lost for 35 years. Nothing in it needed updating.