In 1978, A Nevada Man Nicknamed ’40-Dollar Frank’ First Bought Shares Of Berkshire Hathaway. Three Decades Later Frank Fitzgerald Gathered His Family On The Deck Of His New Dream Home To Say “Thank you, Warren.”
Frank Fitzpatrick bought Berkshire Hathaway shares for $40 each, watched them double, sold too soon, and then did something most investors never find the courage to do.
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In 1995, a family gathered on the deck of a newly purchased lakefront home in Lake Tahoe, Nevada. According to The Wall Street Journal, they came together “for a group hug and said, ‘Thank you, Warren'”. The homeowner was Frank Fitzpatrick, a Lake Tahoe tax lawyer known to friends as “Forty-Dollar Frank.”
That deck scene came long after his first purchase of Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRK-B | BRK-B Price Prediction) stock, which happened in early 1976. The sequence matters: he bought in early 1976, and the group hug on the deck followed in 1995. His story comes from reporter Anupreeta Das, whose Wall Street Journal article “Warren Buffett’s Millionaires Club” was updated on October 21, 2015. Everything below reflects that October 2015 account.
His story is worth retelling because it centers on a mistake, and on what a disciplined investor does after making one.
A $40 Purchase That Started Everything in Early 1976
In early 1976, Fitzpatrick bought about 200 Berkshire Hathaway shares at $40 each. Das counts him among Berkshire’s army of unlikely millionaires, a group of ordinary investors who built wealth by owning the stock.
His path into that group was far from a straight line.
Why Selling After 14 Months Turned Into Regret
Fitzpatrick sold his shares 14 months later, after the stock had doubled. By most standards, doubling your money in 14 months is a result worth celebrating, and taking the gain looked reasonable at the time.
The stock kept climbing after he sold, and Fitzpatrick came to regret the decision. For many investors, that moment becomes a trap. The price they sold at turns into an anchor, and they wait for the stock to fall back to it before buying again. When it never returns, they stay out for good, and a single decision ends up influencing every choice that follows.
Running Back to Berkshire at a Higher Price
Fitzpatrick took a different approach. He eventually bought back in. He paid a higher price than he had received when he sold, accepting a worse entry point on a business he already knew.
“I’ve always had a habit of running back to Berkshire,” he told the Journal.
The word “habit” carries weight. It describes someone who returned to the stock more than once, repeatedly setting aside the pain of an earlier exit.
Where Forty-Dollar Frank’s Shares Ended Up
By the time the Journal’s article ran, Fitzpatrick was 72 years old. He had used some of his Berkshire shares to fund an education nonprofit, and the remaining shares were set aside for his two children. Along with the lakefront home where his family gathered in 1995, those details are the fullest picture the reporting offers of what his investment made possible.
A Lesson in Temperament Most Investors Miss
Forty-Dollar Frank made a bad call. He sold a position that had doubled and watched it keep rising, but what makes his story instructive is what came next: the regret did not keep him out of the stock permanently.
A past mistake does not have to determine the next decision, and paying a higher price to re-enter a business you already understand is a judgment about the business itself. Chasing is a reaction to a price chart. Fitzpatrick’s willingness to swallow a worse price reflected a view about the company he owned, formed well before the price moved away from him.
His experience makes a useful contrast with our earlier story on a Kansas welding supplier who bought Berkshire and held on. One investor never let go; the other let go, regretted it and found his way back. Both paths ran through the same stock. Both depended more on temperament than on timing (if you want to borrow Buffett’s own homework rather than chase Berkshire itself, we sorted his portfolio and pulled the seven cheapest dividend payers into a free report here).
The company’s annual reports and shareholder letters are posted on Berkshire’s official website, and its regulatory filings are available on the SEC’s EDGAR system for anyone wanting to understand Berkshire in its own words before forming a view. Primary documents like these offer the kind of first-hand understanding that allowed Fitzpatrick to keep running back.
Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.
AJ spent 10 years writing about financial markets at The Motley Fool. His coverage centers on technology stocks and the broader macroeconomic trends, from interest rates to geopolitics, that shape where markets are headed next. AJ is drawn to the stories where big-picture economics and individual companies collide.
