There is no documented IQ score for Warren Buffett. The circulated 150 is uncited. Buffett himself has argued that above roughly 125, temperament matters more than intellect.
Six-packs, paper routes and three shares at eleven
Born in Omaha in 1930, the son of a stockbroker and later congressman, Buffett was selling six-packs of Coca-Cola bought from his grandfather's grocery for a profit by age six. At eleven he bought his first stock, three shares of Cities Service preferred, and learned patience the hard way when he sold too early.
As a teenager he ran newspaper routes, put pinball machines in barbershops and filed his first tax return at thirteen.
Three universities and one decisive teacher
His education, entered the way he'd read it: as a balance sheet of what each stage cost and what it returned.
$1,000 in 1965
Berkshire's market value compounded at about 19.8% a year from 1965 to 2023, against about 10.2% for the S&P 500 with dividends. Drag the years and watch the gap.
Seventy years in the ledger
Dear reader, the number you came for does not exist. No test, examiner or date is attached to it, in any biography, interview or filing. It appears in finance listicles and is copied between them, which gives it the look of a fact without the substance of one.
What does exist is a long public record of how he thinks. He has said for decades that investing rewards a particular temperament (patience, the ability to sit still while others panic, and a willingness to look foolish for years) far more than raw horsepower.
His “circle of competence” idea makes the same point: know the edges of what you understand and stay inside them. That is a discipline, not a score. Plenty of very high scorers ignore it and lose money doing so.
So read the 150 the way he would read a stock tip with no source: with interest, and without acting on it. The compounding chart above is the closest thing to a test result he has ever published.
- What's Your IQ research desk
The habits people mistake for IQ
The portfolio: what he built and bought
11 entries, with what each one actually did.
Sources
- Berkshire Hathaway shareholder letters (1965–2024)
- Schroeder, A. (2008). The Snowball. Bantam
- BusinessWeek (1999) interview
- What's Your IQ editorial review of circulated figures