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If you are new to investing it's unlikely that you've heard of many famous investors. Guys who get there jollies from crunching numbers aren't usually featured on the pages of People magazine.

Unless you're Warren Buffett.

If you've heard of anyone, you've probably heard of Mr. Buffett. Warren has made a career of being a good investor. Very good. And becoming very rich doing it. (If the only Mr. Buffett you know wears parrots on his head, hang in there. You might learn something.)

He manages and owns a substantial part of a little enterprise called Berkshire Hathaway. Check out the current quote on NYSE: BRK.A. What does your screen say? No, that's not a mistake. One share really is worth $45,000 (give or take a few hundred depending on what happened today). The "B" shares are a little more affordable. You could get one share for around $1,450 this morning.

So, what does Berkshire Hathaway do besides make money? Actually, it does a lot of things. It owns the company that produces "World Book" encyclopedias. A few days ago it announced that it would buy Dairy Queen.

One of the things Berkshire is known for is insurance. That makes sense since it owns 20 subsidiaries devoted to the trade. One that is particularly interesting is GEICO, which provides automobile insurance to regular folk like us. Berkshire bought GEICO a little over two years ago. Check out Randy Befumo's (TMF Templr) comments about GEICO in the Evening News when it happened. Make a special note of the share price at the time. (Hint for the lazy: The stock price has almost doubled.)

Be Foolish! And be careful! (Your insurance company would want you to.)

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