Warren Buffet: Life in Nebraska

As the biggest shareholder in Berkshire Hathaway, Mr Buffett's personal stake in that growth made him the richest man in the world last year.

This year, he is number two, as Berkshire's share price tumbled in the economic crisis.

His great friend Bill Gates regained his usual position at the top.
But Buffett has never admitted to any interest in such tables, and has trained himself to ignore short-term share price movements, either up or down.

So how has he made his estimated $40bn?
This is a man who has not even started a business. (Berkshire Hathaway was an old textile mill he bought, whose name he kept as the name of his holding company).
Nor has he invented anything, or come up with a way of making businesses more profitable.
And he still lives in his native Omaha, in the mid-western state of Nebraska, 1,200 miles from the financial whizzkids on Wall Street.
T-bone plays bridge
On the 14th floor of a non-descript office block he has rented for almost 50 years, Mr Buffett works his financial magic, reading newspapers and companies' annual reports, looking for the right business to invest in and the right moment to make a move
Over the years, the numbers have grown, as Mr Buffett's financial universe has expanded: from the millions to the hundreds of millions, to today's multibillion-dollar deals.
And yet his modest office remains defiantly low tech.
"I've never had a computer in there, I've never had a calculator in there, I've never had a stock ticker in there," he boasts.
He believes that if a deal needs complicated calculations before you can decide if it is right, then it probably is not. He always leaves a "margin of safety", he says, so that if things don't work out as he'd hoped, he does not lose money.
Mr Buffett has one personal assistant, and hates meetings or having a busy schedule.
He drives himself to work from his house, a few miles along the same street.
His daughter Susie says that most evenings, he will probably have a ham sandwich, and settle down to several hours of online bridge.
If you go online and find yourself playing someone called T-Bone, that is him.

(Originally done By Charles Miller, Money Programme

Warren Buffet: Crisis, what crisis?

The world's greatest investor is weathering the financial crisis by practising what he preaches.
One of Warren Buffett's favourite sayings about the market is: "be greedy when others are fearful and fearful when others are greedy".
When the market was fearful last September, Mr Buffett was greedy, putting $5bn (£3bn) into the investment bank Goldman Sachs on exceptionally favourable terms.

He says he was only able to negotiate the deal because not many people had $5bn to hand at that particular moment.

But there is no doubt Mr Buffett's public show of confidence in the company was, in itself, a valuable asset to Goldman.

Mind-boggling returns
The deal already looks like a good one for Mr Buffett, with potential profits for him in the billions. He has always enjoyed himself in a falling market, which, as he sees it, provides him with the best opportunities.

As if to prove his fabled status as the most successful investor ever, Mr Buffett prints his fund's spectacular growth record, all the way back to 1965, in the annual report of his company, Berkshire Hathaway.
It shows he has achieved an extraordinary 20.3% average annual growth in the company's value, which - he helpfully works out - comes to a mind-boggling 336,000% over the years - 84 times that of the standard US index fund, the S&P 500.

The numbers really are off the scale.

(This article was done by Charles Miller, of Money Program)