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To Build Inevitable Wealth, Simply Avoid Financial Ruin
There are many ways to get rich; only a few ways to go broke
In 1942, the world was at war. In December of the previous year, the United States entered WWII when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.
By that time, the US got into a war that started in 1939. While Americans were quick to adjust back at home, by turning factories into manufacturers of weaponry, the war itself didn’t play out well at all.
America was struggling in the Pacific. It was a rough first year with many casualties. Some people started to lose faith.
That was the year an 11-year-old boy made his first stock purchase. He bought six shares of Cities Service, an energy company, for $38 per share. He bought three shares for himself and three shares for his sister, Doris Buffett.
The boy was of course Warren Buffett, the greatest investor of all time. About 1942, he remembers, “We were losing the war in the Pacific.” Buffett learned an important lesson: “Never bet against America.”
That same year, in the midst of the crisis, the Manhattan Project started, which eventually developed into a nuclear weapon that ended the war in 1945.
