John D. Rockefeller's company refined about nine barrels of oil in every ten in America, and he never owned more than about a quarter of it. In 1911 the Supreme Court ordered it broken into thirty-four pieces — and over the next thirty-one months his stake went from $300m to more than $900m, two thirds of everything he was ever worth, arriving after he had lost.

This is the story from how he went from being a bookkeeping clerk to being the owner of the largest and most dominant oil monopoly in modern history.

Warren Buffett: nothing behind him in Omaha in 1930, $115 of his own at eleven, $9,800 by twenty, $174,000 when seven people put $105,000 into his partnership and he put in $100, a million by 1962, a billion by 1985, about $150bn today after giving away more than $60bn. A thousand dollars put into his company when he took control was worth about $55m by 2024; the same thousand left in the American market came to $400,000 — about a hundred and forty times.

Five decisions were his, and none of them is a stock pick. He took a share of the gains instead of a salary in 1956. He bought a failing textile mill outright rather than sell into the offer — his worst purchase, and the vehicle for everything after it. He bought an insurer in 1967 for the money it holds, not the insurance it sells: $8.6m for a company sitting on $19m of other people's premiums. In 1969 he handed more than $100m of outside money back and kept the corporation. And in 2008 he lent $8bn into the panic, on terms that paid him before the shareholders.

Seven doors were opened or shut by other people — Harvard's rejection, Graham's change of mind, Graham's retirement, a doctor who sat him next to Charlie Munger, a man who would sell his insurance company for fifteen minutes a year, Congress standing behind the banks he had just lent to, and an index committee. Two things were decided by nobody: a market that ran nineteen years, and forty years of falling rates.

One road ended short of his. Julian Robertson held the same view of the same market on money that could be asked for back — and it was.

CHAPTERS

0:00 A thousand dollars, two ways

1:22 What was already in the house

4:01 The first million

12:39 A millionaire buys a mill

17:33 From rich to a billionaire

22:55 What nobody could take back

30:12 The whole thing, counted

32:05 Three things that follow

33:33 Close

The famous version of this story is about his nerve. But the people who actually stood to lose were his parents, and he told them the odds himself. So: whose money was on the table while it could still be lost? Which decisions built the fortune? And how much of it was the market's doing rather than his?