Warren Buffett’s BaZi: Ren Water Tied to Direct Wealth, and the Most Patient Investor Alive

Warren Buffett and Elon Musk have both been the richest person in the world, yet they make money in opposite ways: one bets, borrows and rides huge swings; the other buys and then does nothing for decades. Their BaZi charts really are different too. Musk’s wealth star is Indirect Wealth; Buffett’s hour pillar holds Direct Wealth, and it combines with his Day Master. Before any of that, though, one caveat: his birth time is a round hour that falls exactly on the boundary between two Chinese double-hours.

Birth data: a round hour right on the boundary

3 p.m. sharp is the exact moment the Wei hour ends and the Shen hour begins. Omaha lies almost 6 degrees west of the Central time zone’s standard meridian (90° W), so the sun runs about 24 minutes behind the clock. In true solar time the birth is at 14:36, in the Wei hour. We could not find a reliable record of whether Omaha used daylight saving in 1930; if it did, the time moves back another hour (13:36), still the Wei hour. Only by taking the clock time literally do you get the Shen hour.

“3 o’clock sharp” is itself a number to hold loosely. Birth times passed on by word of mouth are often rounded; the real time could be 2:50 or 3:10. For the hour pillar of this chart, all we can say is that our method leans toward the Wei hour.

The two charts side by side

Here is another case where the favorable and unfavorable elements flip completely. The year, month and day pillars are the same: a Ren Water Day Master born in the Shen month, where Shen Metal feeds Water, so the Day Master is in season. The day branch is Zi Water, Ren Water’s “Goat Blade” (its peak), and Shen and Zi form a half Water combination. The base is already deep. The difference is the hour: the Wei hour brings Fire and Earth, which drain some of the Water and balance the chart; the Shen hour brings Seven Killings Wu Earth plus Shen Metal, and Shen Metal feeds still more Water, so the chart becomes strong.

Testing the hour against the luck pillars: this time it doesn’t work

In the Barack Obama chart we “set the hour by events”, comparing both versions’ luck pillars with his life, and the answer was fairly clear. With Buffett the same method gives no verdict. The luck pillars: a man born in a yang year (the year stem Geng is yang) runs them forwards, starting at age 4.

“fav / unfav” reads the stem first, then the branch: whether each one’s element is favorable (useful), unfavorable, or neither (neutral) for this chart.

Do you see it? The first half of his life looks more like the Shen version: in the 1943–1952 and 1973–1982 luck pillars, the Shen version is favorable in stem and branch while the Wei version is unfavorable in both. Bing-Xu is an Indirect Wealth pillar, and that is exactly the decade in which he saved his first real money from paper routes and pinball machines. The second half looks more like the Wei version: for three luck pillars in a row from 1983, the Wei version’s stems are all favorable (Geng and Xin Metal, Ren Water) and the Shen version’s stems are all unfavorable, and those thirty years are when his wealth truly exploded.

Each chart matches half his life, so our conclusion is that the luck pillars cannot settle a single hour for this chart. Setting the hour by events is not a magic key. When the events are not clearly good or bad (in the 1973 crash he lost money, yet in the same period bought what became his most profitable holdings), or when the differences between the two charts cancel out, the honest answer is that it cannot be settled. The reading below follows the Wei version from our method, and anything that holds only for the Wei version is marked as such.

The Wei version: Ren Water tied to Direct Wealth

Two features match his investing style closely:

1. Ren and Ding combine: a Day Master bound to Wealth

When the Day Master combines with Direct Wealth, the traditional reading is “I go to embrace wealth”: a deep attachment to money. Our engine treats this kind of “combined but not transformed” bond as the Day Master being held in place, its drive discounted. In an ordinary reading that is a warning: easily tied to one thing, slow to let go. In Buffett it is exactly what he is famous for: he buys and then does not sell for decades, and he has described his own approach as “lethargy bordering on sloth”. Being tied down turned into patience. This holds only for the Wei version.

2. Eating God produces Wealth: earning slowly through a craft

Eating God is what the Day Master produces: skill, taste, pleasure in the work itself. When Eating God in turn produces Wealth, a craft is steadily converted into money, a classic “wealthy chart” structure in the tradition. Compared with Hurting Officer producing Wealth, Eating God producing Wealth is gentler and slower. Buffett has done one thing all his life: read annual reports, pick companies, hold for the long term. The year stem Geng Metal, Indirect Resource, attacks the month stem Jia Wood, Eating God (traditionally “the owl steals the food”), which some read as pressure and solitude in youth. Schools disagree on this, so we only note it.

Buffett and Musk: Direct Wealth versus Indirect Wealth

The two richest men share an unexpected feature: in both charts Wealth is unfavorable. The difference is the kind of wealth. Direct Wealth is steady, predictable, step-by-step money; Indirect Wealth is fluid money that comes from bets and timing. Wealth being unfavorable says “money brings a burden”; Direct versus Indirect says “how the money arrives”. Musk’s burden is pressure, controversy and violent swings on paper; Buffett’s is closer to being bound to the same thing for a lifetime.

Over 90% of his fortune came after age 65

The 96% figure is a widely quoted estimate by finance writer Morgan Housel, based on Buffett’s net worth.

The point Buffett is most often used to make is that compounding needs time: he started investing at 11, but most of his fortune grew after 65. In the Wei version’s luck pillars, the three steps from 1983, Geng-Yin, Xin-Mao, Ren-Chen, have stems of Indirect Resource, Direct Resource, Friend: Metal and Water that all support the Day Master. For someone whose Wealth is unfavorable, the money can only be caught and kept once Resource and companions arrive to carry it, the same logic as Jensen Huang, whose fortune soared in his Resource luck pillar.

But let us be clear: the power of compounding comes from time itself. Anyone who started investing at 11 and kept going for eighty years would enjoy it. The luck pillars can only say that those thirty years ran smoothly for his chart; they cannot explain compounding.

Where does the chart miss his real life?

Now: the Jia-Wu luck pillar from 2023

From 2023 he entered the Jia-Wu luck pillar: the stem Jia Wood is Eating God, the branch Wu Fire is Direct Wealth, and Wu clashes with the Zi day branch. In 2025 he announced he would step down as Berkshire’s CEO, with his successor taking over from 2026 while he stays on as chairman. We make no predictions about him personally or about Berkshire, and nothing here is investment advice.

Zi Wei Dou Shu chart

The same birth time, cast in Zi Wei Dou Shu (San He school, the same engine as our Zi Wei chart tool, using the same true solar time as the BaZi chart above). BaZi weighs the five elements and what the chart favors; Zi Wei looks at which stars fall in which palace. The two systems ask different questions, so the Zi Wei chart is shown on its own first, followed by where it agrees and disagrees with the BaZi reading.

The gold frame is the Life Palace; the shaded palaces are its three-sides-and-four-directions (Wealth, Career, Travel). Solid badges are the birth-year transformations (Lu, Quan, Ke, Ji), red names are the six malefic stars, and the small word after a major star is its brightness.

In true solar time Buffett was born in the Wei hour whether or not daylight saving was in force. In that version the Life Palace is empty (in the Chou palace): it holds Tian Kui, borrows Tai Yang and Tai Yin from the opposite palace, and both Tai Yang Lu and Tai Yin Ke sit in that opposite palace. The Wealth Palace holds Tian Ji and Ju Men, both bright: Tian Ji rules analysis and calculation, Ju Men rules research and seeing through appearances, and together they fit the phrase “making money through research” very well. By clock time (15:00, the Shen hour) the chart turns into Qi Sha in the Life Palace, Tan Lang in Wealth and Po Jun in Career, the Sha-Po-Lang pattern, which sits in sharp contrast with a man famous for patience. The BaZi section says this hour cannot be settled by the luck pillars. The two Zi Wei versions differ a lot, but a warning still applies: we only find the Tian Ji and Ju Men Wealth Palace the better fit because we already know he got rich through research.

With the other birth-time versions, the Zi Wei chart becomes:

In BaZi the hour pillar changes every two hours while the day pillar and above stay put. In Zi Wei the Life Palace is set by the lunar month and the hour, so a different hour moves the Life Palace, the Body Palace, the bureau and every major star at once. The same dispute over a birth hour therefore usually matters more for Zi Wei than for BaZi.

For school, leap-month and Zi-hour settings see the Zi Wei chart page; for how the two systems differ see BaZi vs Zi Wei Dou Shu. The hindsight warning applies here too: once you know the outcome, any star can be made to explain it.

Western astrology chart

The same moment of birth, cast as a Western natal chart (tropical zodiac, Placidus houses, the same engine as our natal chart tool). A natal chart uses the sky at the moment of birth, so it needs no true-solar-time correction, but it does need the latitude of the birthplace to fix the Ascendant and the houses. BaZi and Zi Wei are both derived from the Chinese calendar, while a natal chart computes planetary positions directly. Because the three systems start from different places, the chart is listed on its own below, followed by where it agrees with the BaZi and Zi Wei readings.

The Sun in Virgo: detail, analysis, every account settled to the cent, which suits a man who reads annual reports word by word. The Ascendant is Sagittarius, and the chart ruler Jupiter is in Cancer (exalted) in the 7th house. The 7th house is partnership and one-to-one relationships, and Jupiter there is often read as “good fortune comes through partners”; his half-century partnership with Charlie Munger is the obvious example. Saturn in its own sign of Capricorn in the 1st house speaks of patience and long-term thinking. His birth time is a round hour, and we cannot confirm whether Omaha used daylight saving that year, but both versions give a Sagittarius Ascendant with the chart ruler in the 7th house, so the dispute over the time does not change the broad picture of the natal chart. BaZi reads him as balanced Ren Water, with the Day Master combining with Direct Wealth; that pairs nicely with a Virgo Sun that both values money and watches over it.

With the other birth time, the chart becomes:

Planets move very little in a day, so the Sun and Mercury through Pluto are almost identical in both versions. What changes most is the Ascendant and the houses: the whole wheel turns by roughly one house every two hours.

Domicile, exaltation, fall and detriment in brackets are the classical categories for how comfortably a planet works in a sign; they are not verdicts of good or bad. For how to read the big three, the ten planets and aspects, see rising sign, Moon sign, the ten planets and aspects. The hindsight warning applies here too: once you know the outcome, any sign can be made to explain it.

Is your wealth Direct or Indirect?

The four pillars, Ten Gods, strength score and luck pillars on this page all come from the same engine as the chart on our home page. Enter your own birth details to see whether the Wealth star in your chart is Direct or Indirect, and whether it is favorable or unfavorable. If your birth time is also a round hour sitting right on a boundary, remember to cast both hours.