1. Including Buffett’s stock in Data Documents, a separate investment, the Buffetts’ net worth was somewhere between $9.5 and $10 million.
2. Buffett’s description, in Patricia E. Bauer’s “The Convictions of a Long-Distance Investor,” Channels, November 1986, was, “One time we had a dog on the roof, and my son called to him and he jumped. It was so awful—the dog that loves you so much that he jumps off the roof …”—leaving the reader to wonder how the dog got on the roof.
3. Interview with Hallie Smith.
4. “Haight-Ashbury: The Birth of Hip,” CBC Television, March 24, 1968.
5. In 1967, over 2.5 billion shares traded, topping the previous 1966 record by one third. Thomas Mullaney, “Week in Finance: Washington Bullish,” New York Times, December 31, 1967.
6. But insurers looked undervalued and he thought they would get taken over. He bought Home Insurance and Employers Group Associates.
7. At high rates of return, and paying no tax. If a shareholder had taken $0.06 a share—after paying a tax on the $0.10 dividend—and put it in the market earning 5% on average, he would have about $0.42. If Buffett had kept that $0.10, and compounded it at the 21% he earned over the past forty years, a shareholder, who would have been slightly diluted over the years, would be $135 richer. Looking at it on a larger scale, the tiny dividend “cost” Berkshire shareholders over $200 million as of 2007.
8. Interview with Verne McKenzie.
9. “Requiem for an Industry: Industry Comes Full Circle,” Providence Sunday Journal, March 3, 1968.
10. Letter to partners, January 25, 1967.
11. By September 30, 1967, the partnership had $14.2 million in treasuries and short-term debt out of a total $83.7 million invested.
12. Interview with Bill Scott.
13. Interview with Charlie Heider.
14. Robert Dorr, “ ‘Unusual Risk’ Ringwalt Specialty,” Omaha World-Herald, March 12, 1967, and Ringwalt’s Tales of National Indemnity and Its Founder (Omaha: National Indemnity Co., 1990) recount stories of lion tamers, circus performers, and hole-in-one contests. Buffett heard of the burlesque stars from Ringwalt.
15. Berkshire paid Heider a $140,000 fee for the transaction.
16. Interview with Bill Scott.
17. With the company closely held, it took only a week to round up the necessary 80% shareholder approvals.
18. In his book, Ringwalt says he was only driving around looking for a metered place on the street because he refused to pay a parking garage.
19. This was a reason why National Indemnity would not need reinsurance, or protection from other insurers, which both was expensive and would make it a dependent.
20. Ringwalt also was included in the shareholder register of Diversified Retailing in 1976 (he actually sold 3,032 shares back to the company in its tender offer).