This essay originally published in the Sunday, Sept. 1, 2024 edition of the Fortune Archives newsletter.
Happy birthday to Warren Buffett, who turned 94 on Aug. 30.
The Oracle of Omaha’s investments and opinions still hold massive sway over markets—and he has made some big moves lately. When his conglomerate holding company Berkshire Hathaway revealed earlier this month that it had dramatically trimmed its position in Apple, journalists raced to call analysts (who mostly urged calm). Fortune’s Shawn Tully dubbed it “one of the best-publicized selloffs by any famous investor in recent memory”—and one of the best bets of Buffett’s illustrious career.
In 1988, Buffett’s investing prowess was already well-known when Fortune staffer Carol J. Loomis profiled the 57-year-old. The year before, while “Black Monday” terrorized Wall Street and the S&P 500 gained just 2%, Berkshire shareholders saw their investment grow almost 20%. Buffett liked to call Berkshire his canvas, and “this latest example of Buffett brushwork,” Loomis wrote, “has to rank as one more masterpiece.”
The legendary stock market investor aside, however, there was another “craftsman at work,” she wrote. Loomis—herself a legend in business journalism—peeled back the curtain on “Buffett the businessman, a buyer and manager of companies and a fellow whose skill is not understood widely at all.”
Both versions of the man, Loomis explained, are devoted to finding “good businesses”: companies that boast above-average returns on equity with relatively little investment. Beyond insurance, Buffett’s “Sainted Seven” business portfolio at the time included a California candy producer, an Omaha furniture retailer, and the Buffalo News, which Loomis identified as his favorite property. Today, Berkshire owns dozens of businesses, including household names such as Geico, Duracell, Fruit of the Loom, and Dairy Queen.
Above all, Loomis wrote, Buffett values a well-run company. He’ll only acquire it if he believes it has good managers who are passionate about their work. And, she explained, he “devoutly wishes to keep them fanatics. ‘Wonderful businesses run by wonderful people’ is his description of the scene he wants to look down on as a chief executive.”
Rose Blumkin, the founder and chairwoman of Nebraska Furniture Mart, held a special place in Buffett’s heart. Blumkin, in Loomis’s telling, “emigrated from Russia as a young woman, started a tiny furniture store that offered rock-bottom prices—her motto is ‘Sell cheap and tell the truth’—and built it into a business that last year did $140 million in sales.”
In 1988, Blumkin was the same age Buffett turned this week, 94; and like him, she was still at it. She worked seven days a week in the Nebraska Furniture Mart’s carpet department. In his annual report, Buffett had predicted jokingly that Blumkin “may well reach her full potential in another five or ten years. Therefore, I’ve persuaded the Board to scrap our mandatory-retirement-at-100 policy.”
He may soon find himself glad he did so.
