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King Henry George of England

Between the years of 1997 and 1998 Buffet purchased 129 million ounces of silver and then sold all of it in 2006 for twice what he paid. Doubling his money in 8 years is a 9% annual return. Buffet didn't try to leverage his investment at all and although he had the market cornered he failed to beat the S&P index over that same period. Had he kept the investment he would have made an 8% annual average return however in todays market (2024 valuations) Bufet would have had 11.1% of the total global demand for silver. Had he leased the silver instead of sold it, at 2024 silver prices and a 7% lease rate, he would have made $255,500,000 in that year, which equals 39.5% of the purchase value of the silver. To get an idea of the amount of money he could have made going back to 1998, let's assume a lease rate of 7% and an initial investment value of $647,580,000. If the average annual return was 8% without leasing, with leasing that return would have been 15.6% - easily beating the S&P index over that same period. But here is where it gets good. Buffet's company Berkshire Hathaway experienced an average annual return of 10% over the years 1998 to 2025 which means the silver leasing plan would have over shadowed the growth of his own company. Now, if you think Buffet didn't know this your crazy... But why sell? Was he being pressured by the government to dump his silver ownership to prevent inflation at the time? We will never know but as it stands Warren buffet is one of the many ButterNutty people we have come to love.