Becoming Berkshire

In Episode 4 of Becoming Berkshire, we are still in 1963. This episode covers one of the strangest and most important investments in Warren Buffett’s early career: American Express and the salad oil scandal. At the time, Buffett was still running Buffett Partnership Limited and was building his position in Berkshire Hathaway. American Express was caught in a major scandal involving fake soybean oi...

In Episode 3 of Becoming Berkshire, we enter 1963, the year Buffett’s partnership letter and Berkshire Hathaway’s annual report start to feel like two parts of the same story. Buffett was still running the Buffett Partnership, but Berkshire Hathaway was now in the picture. The partnership letter shows Buffett’s investing playbook: generals, workouts, and controls. The annual report shows the strug...

In 1962, Warren Buffett began buying shares of Berkshire Hathaway, a struggling New England textile mill selling far below book value. On paper, it looked like a classic Ben Graham cigar butt: cheap, asset-heavy, and ignored. But the annual report showed a much harder reality — losses, mill closures, overproduction, falling prices, and constant capital needs. This episode looks at Berkshire Hathaw...

In this episode, we look at Warren Buffett’s 1962 partnership letter and the early framework behind his investing style. Buffett was still deeply influenced by Ben Graham, but you can already see him evolving. He breaks down the partnership’s investments into generals, workouts, and controls, discusses the power of compounding, and explains why true conservatism comes from facts, reasoning, and pr...