Monday, December 8, 2008

Who Knew? Steve Jobs Is An Original Goldbug

I'm working my way through Snowball, the 960 page biography of Warren Buffett written by Alice Schroeder, and came upon this bit of interesting information on page 470:

A brash new trustee at Grinnell[College], Steve Jobs...tried to talk the investment committee into selling all stocks and buying gold...the investment committee demurred, and Grinnell did not buy gold.
It appears Jobs' recommendation occurred in mid-1979. At the time, gold was trading between $247 and $340. And, of course, n early-1980, spot gold traded as high as $830 per ounce.

It would have been one hell of a trade if Grinnell bought the gold and then sold into the strength the gold price displayed in early-1980.

Buffett and Jobs were both on the Board of Grinnell.

2 comments:

  1. I also read this was some degree of fascination. What's as surprising is that Grinnell would have put such a young guy on its board -- Apple had not yet become famous for its Mac.

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    1. Apple II was huge before IBM PC cut into its sales. Mac came later as a response to IBM moving into Apple's the personal computer market.

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