1. The net gain on investments was $7,434. He also put $2,500 into the account that he’d saved from his pay working at Buffett-Falk.
2. Delving a little further into Buffett’s reasoning about the valuation of an insurance business: “The stock was trading around forty dollars and therefore the whole company was selling for about seven million. I figured the company would be worth as much as the premium volume, roughly, because they would get the investment income on ‘float’ that was pretty close to dollar-for-dollar, maybe with the premium income. Plus, they’d have the book value. So I figured it would always be worth at least as much as the premium. Now, all I had to do was get to a billion dollars of premium income and I was going to be a millionaire.”
3. Interview with Margaret Landon, the secretary at Buffett-Falk.
4. According to Walter Schloss in an interview, the Norman family, who were heirs of Julius Rosenwald of Sears, Roebuck, “received GEICO stock because they were big investors in Graham-Newman. When the Normans wanted to put more money with Graham-Newman, they gave Ben Graham the GEICO stock he had distributed to them instead of putting cash in. Warren is out in Omaha, and he’s buying GEICO. But Graham didn’t know he was selling to Warren, and Warren couldn’t figure out why Graham-Newman was selling it.” The distribution of GEICO stock by Graham-Newman is also described in Janet Lowe’s Benjamin Graham on Value Investing: Lessons from the Dean of Wall Street. Chicago: Dearborn Financial Publishing, 1994.
5. Interview with Bob Soener, who called him “Buffie” in those days.
6. As seen in a photograph taken in the classroom.
7. Interview with Lee Seeman.
8. Interview with Margaret Landon. Her memory of him is in this posture, reading.
9. Buffett traded two stocks personally, Carpenter Paper and Fairmont Foods. While astute enough to set the firm up as a market maker and trade the stocks, he was immature (albeit witty) enough to refer to the CEO of Fairmont Foods, D. K. Howe, as “Don’t Know Howe.”
10. Bill Rosenwald later founded the United Jewish Appeal of New York.
11. Interviews with Doris Buffett, Roberta Buffett Bialek.
12. Brig. Gen. Warren Wood of the 34th National Guard Division.
13. Interview with Byron Swanson.
14. Interview with Fred Stanback.
15. Susie told Sue Brownlee (Sue James Stewart) this the week after she returned from her honeymoon. Interview with Sue James Stewart.
16. Wahoo is best known as the birthplace of movie mogul Darryl F. Zanuck.
17. “Love Only Thing That Stops Guard,” Omaha World-Herald, April 20, 1952.