Warren Buffett "This day changed my life"

It's no secret that Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett has a knack for investing. After all, he's been in the market for 76 years.But it was a trip Buffett took to Washington, D.C. one Saturday afternoon as a 20-year-old Columbia University grad student that changed the course of his investing career.

At 19, Buffett bought "The Intelligent Investor" by investor Benjamin Graham, who would later become Buffet's hero and mentor. "My favorite investment, one that embodies this philosophy, is Geico, which I learned about when I was 20 years old," Buffett says.

At Columbia Business School, where Buffett became a student of Graham's, he visited Columbia library on Saturday in 1951. There, he learned that Graham was chairman of Government Employees Insurance Company, or GEICO.

He wasted no time locating Geico's headquarters. He got on a train and left New York City.

He went to Lorimer "Davy" Davidson — the only other person working in the office that day — who would later become CEO of Geico. "Davy had no reason to talk to me, but when I told him I was a student of Graham's, he then spent four or so hours answering unending questions about insurance in general and Geico specifically," Buffett says.

"He answered my questions, taught me the insurance business and explained to me the competitive advantage that Geico had," Buffett says. "That afternoon changed my life."

Source: Bloomberg Pro Terminal

Trader Bozhidar Arabadzhiev

Read more:

• PAUL TUDOR JONES: The next recession will be ‘frightening’
• Jim Rogers about the bubbles, emerging markets, Asia and something else
• Linda Raschke on Twitter: “So nice when someone sums up timeless guidelines with such a well organized layout”
• Ray Dalio: “The World Has Gone Mad and the System Is Broken.”
• Bill Gross: Cheap is not always cheerful in value investing