Warren Buffett

Warren Buffett was born under the shadow of the Great Depression in the small mid-American city of Omaha; his father was a stockbroker who later won a seat in Congress. In an era when ordinary people found investing both unfamiliar and daunting, this boy with an unusual sensitivity to numbers took buying and selling for a game from very early on: going door to door hawking chewing gum and newspapers, he bought his first stock at eleven. For him money was never merely a desire, but a problem that could be cracked by reason.

What truly shaped him was Benjamin Graham, whom he read in his college years and later learned from directly at Columbia Business School. The core of value investing — regarding a stock as a piece of a business, and buying only when the price is far below intrinsic value — became his lifelong, unchanging creed. He often distilled all his principles into one almost stubborn sentence: never lose money. This restraint kept him rare in his composure amid feverish markets.

Starting from a partnership in Omaha, he bought the near-decaying textile mill Berkshire Hathaway — a deal he would later repeatedly mock as a mistake, yet which by a strange twist became the stage for his ambitions. He turned this mill into an investment holding platform, using the float of the insurance business to obtain a steady stream of long-term capital, and then patiently wagered it on good businesses with wide moats such as Coca-Cola, See's Candies, and The Washington Post. His partnership of more than half a century with Charlie Munger further transformed him from a penny-pinching hunter into a long-term owner willing to pay a fair price for excellence.

His influence far exceeded his rank on the rich list. When financial derivatives were being revered as innovation, he bluntly called them weapons of mass destruction; in the depths of crisis he instead injected capital against the tide and publicly bet on America. His plain, candid annual letters to shareholders let countless ordinary people understand for the first time the common sense of investing and human nature. Living in the same old house for decades and driving an unremarkable car, he used an extremely simple lifestyle to set off his utmost faith in compounding and time.

In his later years Buffett turned his gaze to giving his fortune away. He pledged to donate the vast majority of his wealth and, together with the Gateses, launched the Giving Pledge, calling on the world's ultra-rich to give back to society after their deaths. The passing of his lifelong partner Munger, and his decision to announce a handover, added a serene coda to this legend spanning most of a century. What people remember is not only the investor who turned a few thousand dollars into a vast empire, but a sage who spent a lifetime proving that patience, reason, and honesty can likewise lead to greatness.