• For 20 years, I fought the textile business before I gave up. As instead of putting that money into the textile business originally, we just started out with the insurance company, Berkshire would be worth twice as much as it is now.
• Warren Buffett • Explaining what the “dumbest” stock he ever bought was. Wait, what? Is he really claiming Berkshire Hathaway as his dumbest stock purchase ever? Yes, and the reason for that is that Berkshire was initially a textile firm, when in reality he should have started a new insurance business as his corporate shell. He initially bought out Berkshire partly to get rid of the former owner, whom he clashed with, which put him in a very strange spot. “I had now committed a major amount of money to a terrible business,” he notes. Buffett made most of his money off of insurance – specifically GEICO, which we bet you didn’t know he owned. The company handles other random stuff, including Ginsu knives and The Buffalo News, but one thing Berkshire no longer creates is textiles. The last legacy plant closed way back in 1985. source

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