1930-
Chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway Inc.

The Oracle of Omaha.

Without a doubt Warren Edward Buffett is the greatest stock investor in modern times, and perhaps the most prescient oracle in the history of the stock market. If an individual had invested $10,000 in Berkshire Hathaway when Buffett purchased a controlling interest in 1965, by 1999 that individual's portfolio would have been worth $51 million. Had that same individual invested $10,000 in the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index, their portfolio would have been worth a mere $497,431. Yet, Buffett has not added a major position to the stock portfolio of Berkshire Hathaway since amassing 4-3 percent of McDonald's Corporation in 1995. During the second half of the 1990s he transformed what had previously been a sideline at Berkshire Hathaway into a main focus: the acquisition of entire companies. Between 1996 and 1999 Berkshire Hathaway, located in Omaha, Nebraska, spent $27.3 billion to purchase seven companies...