The well-known secret that made Warren Buffet billions

There's two things in common between Harvard MBA finance bros and arm-chair Coinbase investors yolo-ing their life savings into Dogecoin — they're insufferable and they like to quote Warren Buffet for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The quote about the importance of time in the market is probably more played than Ed Sheeran's Shape of You but why does everyone rave about time in the market and how important is it really?

Let's begin with a question, if you were to start investing today, would you rather average 15% annually for the next 70 years or average 66% for the next 25? These numbers aren't fairy dust, these are the returns of the two most legendary investors in Wall Street history — Warren Buffet and Jim Simmons.

Quick back of the napkin math would suggest the outcome of both should be relatively close. The difference in the two investors' wealth is the same as Luxembourg's GDP — $60billion. Warren Buffet's current net worth is $85 billion compared to $21 billion for Jim Simmons.

This entire compounding thing breaks my brain. 99% of Buffett's wealth was generated after his 50th birthday and 95% after his 70th. Imagine a world where Warrent Buffett was, too, a finance bro — a Harvard MBA, worked at a hedge fund, started investing at 30, and retired at 60 — Buffet would be worth roughly $12 Million (0.01% of his current wealth). It's almost as if Einstein knew what he was talking about (surprise, surprise) calling compounding the eighth wonder of the world.