QuestionerBill Gross made recent comments that his generation of investors, yourselves included, owed a deal of their success to timing. Do you agree with Bill's comment, and do you think a similar opportunity will provide itself to today's investors? Thank you.
WarrenYeah, there's no question that being born in the United States was a huge, huge, huge advantage to me. And as I've pointed out in a recent article, being born male was a big advantage. I would not have had the same opportunities in the investment or in business world remotely that I've had if I'd been a female born in 1930. And the timing could have been a little better. Actually, my dad was a security salesman, and, you know, I was conceived in no. November, 1929. And if you remember, the stocks had gone down dramatically at that time. And there really wasn't anybody to call on for my dad. And there wasn't any television at home or anything. So here I am. So I feel myself very lucky that the crash of 1929 came along. And that also provided a decade, more than a decade, a decade, a period. people who were very turned off, well, it was a decade of terrible business for quite a while, and then a decade of or more of people that were turned off on stocks, just as we sort of had a decade like that in the past decade going up to 2010 or so of people that, a lot of people that have gotten turned off by stocks. So that was, that was a favorable environment. But the United States itself was an incredibly favorable environment. If I'd been born five years earlier, I probably would have made more money. been born 10 or 15 years later, I would have made probably less money. But I envy the baby that's being born today in the United States. I mean, I think on a probability basis, that's the luckiest individual that's ever been born. And I think that they will do very well in life in all kinds of ways on a probability basis, better than existed when I was born. And I think they'll have opportunities to do very well in the investment field.