The Oracle of Omaha was once a nervous rookie.
At the tender age of 11, Warren Buffett took the biggest gamble of his young life, spending all of the money he had saved since age 6 — $114.75 — on three shares of Cities Service preferred stock.
“I went all in,” Buffett wrote in his annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway BRK.A, -1.92% BRK.B, -1.67% shareholders on Saturday.
“I had become a capitalist, and it felt good,” Buffett recalled in the letter. The event was apparently so monumental for the future investing icon that he remembers the exact day: March 11, 1942.
See also: Why Warren Buffett’s annual letter may not be all happy news
At the time, America “faced a crisis,” Buffett noted, as losses mounted in the war the country had joined just three months prior. But America of course prevailed, and entered a period of post-war prosperity just a few years later.
Buffett’s letter offered some investing lessons along with the history class.
“If my $114.75 had been invested in a no-fee S&P 500 SPX, +0.64% index fund, and all dividends had been reinvested, my stake would have grown to be worth (pre-taxes) $606,811 on January 31, 2019 (the latest data available before the printing of this letter),” Buffett wrote.
“Meanwhile, a $1 million investment by a tax-free institution of that time — say, a pension fund or college endowment — would have grown to about $5.3 billion.”
Buffett’s business acumen flourished fast. At 13, he transformed his paper route into a lucrative business and enrolled at age 16 at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School to study business. Parents who want their kids to follow in Buffett’s footsteps should get started early: even toddlers understand how money works, and experts say it’s best to teach children how to handle money as soon as possible.
Today Buffett’s empire includes sizeable stakes in American Express AXP, +0.78% , AAPL, +1.12% Coca-Cola KO, -1.26% , Bank of America BAC, -0.72% and Wells Fargo WFC, -1.09% WFC, -1.09% Berkshire Hathaway also owns chunk of Kraft Heinz KHC, -27.46% and that company’s disappointing results cost Buffett some $4.4 billion on Friday.
Berkshire Hathaway “A” Class shares have been down .66% over the past 12 months, compared to a 2.85 % gain for the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +0.70% and a 1.65% rise for the S&P 500 SPX, +0.64% .