Berkshire Hathaway Inc (BRK.A)

[bar1080]

Sunspotter:

I found penny stocks around 1995 when a fraudster arrived in my own business sector as the internet was being born. Although I was a lawyer I, -- like most lawyers -- knew nothing about Pennyland. I had invested in stocks since college and flailed at my investments like 98% of newbies. Luckily, I knew enough to buy quality issues and I had much of my money then in bonds and bank CDs which weren't hard to figure out.

In the 1980s I had two sons and I knew I had to do better.

Fortunately, I had a brokerage account with John Bogle's Vanguard Group. Bogle (RIP) was making enemies on Wall Street with his radical creation, the Index fund. Index funds arrived at the perfect moment for me and my toddler sons. The well-regarded mutual funds I invested their money in consistently lagged benchmarks. By the late 1980s I regularly compared their respected mutual funds with the simple S&P 500. No question Bogle was right! None of the fancy highly paid pros consistently topped index funds. Best of all, my kids were slowly getting rich.

The internet gave me access to university research on personal finance, notably papers from Berkeley's Professor Terrance Odeon and some other academics. If you're interested, I have most of those papers, and some essential Buffett/Munger wisdom, cited on this board:
https://investorshub.advfn.com/Newbies-Investing-Questions-5028

Prof Odean has retired, but you can learn about him here
https://haas.berkeley.edu/faculty/odean-terrance/:

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As for Berkshire, I've only owned it for about six years. Most of my money is still indexed (the S&P 500 is doing great this year) but I and the kids both own some individual blue chip stocks. My kids also cleaned up with the QQQ index fund I bought for them about 12 years ago.