What Warren Buffett Learnt From Buying His First Stock At The Age of 11

What were you doing at the age of 11? Studying, playing and pursuing other hobbies must have been the tasks your day to day life comprised of, right? But the days were not this way for 92-year-old billionaire Warren Buffett.

Warren Buffett Bought His First Stock At The Age Of 11

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At the age of 11, Warren Buffett had already gotten into the investing game by buying his first stock even before entering his teens. In the spring of 1942, when he was yet to turn 12 years old, Buffett purchased six shares of Cities Service Preferred for $38 apiece. The company was a natural gas company founded in 1910.

¡°The year was 1942, I was 11, and I went all in, investing $114.75 I had begun accumulating at age 6,¡± Buffett wrote in his annual letter to shareholders in 2019. ¡°What I bought was three shares of Cities Service preferred stock. I had become a capitalist, and it felt good.¡±

Fast forward to today, i.e. about eight decades later, he is the world's fifth richest person (as per Forbes list), amassing a fortune of $117 billion and pledging to donate 99% of his net worth.

What He Learnt From The Purchase Of His First Stock

So what did he learn? Well, since buying his first stock in 1942, Buffett has learnt to buy, hold and not watch the markets too closely.

When Buffett bought his first stock in 1942, the headlines didn¡¯t look good, he said: ¡°We were losing the war in the Pacific.¡± Markets go up and down every day, but that doesn¡¯t necessarily mean there¡¯s significance to every move. As an investor, it helps to be patient and to accept a certain level of uncertainty.

Since buying his first stock at age 11, ¡°Many years have gone by and I¡¯ve never known what the market is going to do the next day,¡± Buffett said. ¡°That¡¯s not my game. My game is to decide whether I¡¯m in the right economy, which America has definitely been ever since that time.¡±

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Words Of Wisdom From The Billionaire

Rather than trying to time your investments, buy and hold for the long term, Warren Buffett told, as per CNBC. ¡°The money is made in investments by investing, and by owning good companies for long periods of time. If they buy good companies, buy them over time, they¡¯re going to do fine 10, 20, 30 years from now.¡±

It¡¯s what the billionaire has been doing since the 1940s and what he still does today, regardless of the headlines. ¡°I¡¯ve owned stocks consistently since 1942. I was buying stocks the day before the [2016] election. I was buying stocks the same day after the election. Had Hillary been elected, it would¡¯ve been the same thing.¡±

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