Weitz Investment Management

Wallace Weitz

Wallace "Wally" Weitz is a value investor who has spent his career in Omaha, the same city as Warren Buffett, which earned him the nickname "Omaha's Other Sage." Born in New York, Weitz bought his first stock—ten shares of General Telephone & Electronics—at the age of twelve, and he discovered Benjamin Graham's Security Analysis while studying economics at Carleton College, where he earned his degree in 1970. He began his career as a securities analyst in New York before moving to Omaha in 1973 to join the regional brokerage Chiles, Heider & Co., where he spent a decade as an analyst and portfolio manager. Weitz struck out on his own in 1983, founding Wallace R. Weitz & Company, which later became Weitz Investment Management, and he has served as the firm's co-Chief Investment Officer and portfolio manager ever since. He approaches investing with a bottom-up, high-conviction style: he looks for understandable businesses trading at a discount, holds them patiently, and is willing to back companies going through temporary trouble. He has described the goal as finding businesses that can deliver steady returns over time, and he has sat on the board of Berkshire Hathaway since 2022. Weitz also served as a trustee of the Weitz Funds from 1986, and his years of disciplined value investing in Buffett's hometown have made the comparison to the Berkshire chairman a running theme of his biography.