New York - Wall Street Gurus: Ignore Warren Buffett's Call To Buy Stocks It's All Propaganda |
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These are perfectly sensible questions given that the risk tolerance of one person is rarely the risk tolerance of another. How many Americans have the exact retirement goals, financial means, and other suitability fingerprints of Warren the Oracle of Mutual of Omaha Buffett? GET YOUR HEADS ON PEOPLE!
Here are five reasons to eschew EVERY WORD Warren Buffett said here:
1. He bears no significant risk to a complete loss in his “personal” account. If he was 100% in treasuries, as he mentioned, he has already lost nearly 50% of his account. It is a psychological “sunk cost” and switching to U.S. equities from those debentures was more about propaganda than profit. Furthermore, what if his personal account is only a couple hundred thousand? It would be comparable to you and I taking our spare change and buying penny stocks (instead of leaving them in U.S. currency form).
2. He is 78 years old. Any of his actuarians would not give him the benefit of another 10 years on this earth, let alone the 20 that he estimates it may take for domestic stocks to recover. This is proof that he doesn’t need the money and doesn’t even care IF they recover. It also implies that he doesn’t care if you live to see the prediction come true or not - he’ll be dead. What will he care? Again, no consequences for his statements.
3. Buffett carefully omits that Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A) holds several publicly traded foreign stocks: SNY (Paris, France), GSK (Middlesex, ENG, UK), IR (Hamilton, Bermuda), and according to his advertisement, the list is growing to include Israeli and Far-East Companies too. There is a huge difference between what a personal account, without a stated value, and the behemoth Berkshire Hathaway is buying. The first is insignificant, the second is expedient (hence, it is going global).
4. He’s a political puppet now. Notice how many meetings he’s had with the president and future presidents? Who else can politicians turn to? Greenspan “Mr. Midas Touch” got his head handed to him earlier this week over his fallible self-regulating model and short sighted risks. Bernanke is a joke. And no politicians are worth a shake until after elections. So who is the US pinch hitter? Buffett! Yeah, everyone knows he’s rich and actually makes money - let’s see if he’ll do some “verbal intervention” for the good old USA.
5. HE ISN’T YOU. Every investor has a risk tolerance, time horizon, saving potential, investing potential and personality that makes them special. From a suitability perspective, if the average CFP (Certified Financial Planner) told the New York Times that he was moving all of his senior citizen accounts out of bonds and into equities, he would be tried for malpractice due to improper suitability assessment.
Bottom line: it is all propaganda. Go back to your jobs (if you are lucky enough to have one) and ignore Warren Buffett and anyone else with.
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And below is an article from today's Wall Street Journal saying that Mr. Buffet has not timed the market well.
Maybe the Oracle of Omaha failed to see how bad the market was going to get.
Mr. Buffett looks to be committing his capital too early. On some bets, waiting might have gotten him better terms or more attractive entry prices.
This is not a cheap gibe based on the S&P 500 being down nearly 7% since Oct. 17, when Mr. Buffett wrote in the New York Times that he was gobbling up U.S. stocks. Any assessment of Mr. Buffett's record would be skewed if it focused too much on timing.
But Mr. Buffett has expressed regret that he didn't do certain deals differently, including an investment in Gillette in 1989. And he might wish he could tweak some recent ones, including two derivatives bets that could show sizable paper losses when Berkshire reports third-quarter results.
With one, Berkshire significantly increased its exposure to credit-default swaps. The company wrote contracts predominantly providing default protection on certain junk-rated corporations in North America. Berkshire more than doubled its notional exposure on these CDS to $8.8 billion between the end of 2006 and the middle of this year.
Berkshire says the CDS agreements have features that cap losses and the company is receiving large payments for writing them. Still, Berkshire booked a $490 million mark-to-market loss on these CDS in the first quarter, which narrowed to $136 million in the second quarter. Given the deterioration in the credit markets, the third quarter hit on them could be large.
The other large derivatives trade uses options to make directional bets on four stock indexes, three outside the U.S. Berkshire increased its exposure to these options through 2007 and the first half of this year. These, too, could produce paper losses in the third quarter.
Mr. Buffett's defenders argue that both the CDS and options will pay off over time. With the CDS, they believe he's carefully chosen the companies on which to sell default protection. And they argue the options are almost certainly going to pay off because they appear to make the safe wager that the indexes will be higher a long time in the future. Berkshire says the options have a weighted average remaining life of 14 years.
But both derivatives trades suggest Mr. Buffett was relatively comfortable about the prospects for U.S. corporations and global stocks at a time when some were predicting a bust.
While long-term profits might be made, Berkshire has arguably tied up capital that could instead have been plowed into trades that might pay off more handsomely -- and more quickly.
Then there's Berkshire's $5 billion investment in Goldman Sachs Group, executed in September. The advantageous terms of deal made it look savvy. But soon after, Goldman's stock cratered as stock investors, clients and creditors got jitters about broker-dealers. Goldman's situation steadied when the government guaranteed bank debt and invested $10 billion. But without those actions, Berkshire's investment was at risk.
Admittedly, Berkshire might always have believed that the government would act to protect Goldman when it sunk $5 billion into the firm. However, the government has shown that it can structure investments in ways that end up hurting other shareholders.
Time for the Oracle to get a new crystal ball.
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Total7
Read Comments (7) — Post Yours »
1
Oct 27, 2008 at 07:05 PM Anonymous Says:
whoever wrote this article probally has never made a penny investing and is a fool.
2
Oct 27, 2008 at 08:02 PM Anonymous Says:
Now is the time to make money. Anyone that ever did some research or knows a little about investing knows that now is the time to buy not sell. Buy low sell high. Eventually the market will go up, not today, not tomorrow, but in 10 years from now you will look back and say " I should've bought then".
I keep on investing, everytime it drops more I keep on buying more. Yes, I've lost lots of money but eventually since I'm not selling I will have gained a lot.
Good luck.
3
Oct 27, 2008 at 10:07 PM Anonymous Says:
“ Now is the time to make money. Anyone that ever did some research or knows a little about investing knows that now is the time to buy not sell. Buy low sell high. Eventually the market will go up, not today, not tomorrow, but in 10 years from now you will look back and say " I should've bought then".
I keep on investing, everytime it drops more I keep on buying more. Yes, I've lost lots of money but eventually since I'm not selling I will have gained a lot.
Good luck. ”
so when the dow hits 5000 you will also say buy - ( then maybe i will listen to you )
4
Oct 27, 2008 at 09:58 PM Avraham Abba Says:
“ Now is the time to make money. Anyone that ever did some research or knows a little about investing knows that now is the time to buy not sell. Buy low sell high. Eventually the market will go up, not today, not tomorrow, but in 10 years from now you will look back and say " I should've bought then".
I keep on investing, everytime it drops more I keep on buying more. Yes, I've lost lots of money but eventually since I'm not selling I will have gained a lot.
Good luck. ”
I agree with Anonymous # 3. I also lost a lot but I also keep buying every time it goes down. This is the time to buy. If it goes down more, buy more. That's it.
When oil goes down a lot more, that will be the right time to buy oil. Now, it's time to buy stocks, and soon again.
5
Oct 27, 2008 at 10:33 PM Anonymous Says:
Their is a reason why buffett richer ten us.because his strength. His massage is when others are greedy be fearful, and when others are fearful be greedy.
6
Oct 27, 2008 at 11:57 PM Read Between the Lines Says:
I think the point he was trying to make was MOVE OUT OF CURRENCY, and his dilemma was how to say it without setting off the panic bomb. I think the international bailouts will not work, and is only transferring an insolvable financial problem on the balance sheets of national Governments, many of which already hold balance sheets which would have forced them into administration had they been corporate entities. If Moody's and S&P screwed up on credit ratings in the housing bubble, I think we can take it as a given that their ratings on government debt come directly from their "pulling numbers out of our arse's" department, as there is barely a person alive today who truly understands what government debt actually means.
In other words government debt is more about psychological standing than about hard numbers. Japan is a proof clear enough for any blind man to see, that a Government in debt it has no hope of ever clearing, can still draw credit and sell bonds, simply on the impression that they're financially stable. Which is in a way, repeating the same messed up thinking which landed Wall Street where they are today. Sometime in the next two years, the financial world will wake up with the realization that world governments are sitting on top of piles of debt which have expanded due to deflationary cycles which are due to start setting in next year, and these debts are in proportion to a GDP which we should reasonably expect to see a large percentage of value slashed down due to asset devaluation, and even more percentage points because of the imminent recession/depression (and let's not forget that this is an economy with a private debt ratio of 300% GDP). This realization will sink in as the number crunching of asset deflation goes on over the next year, and suddenly people will realize that US, Japanese or European Treasuries are not the soundest of investments. Parallel to the panic sweep which swept the the bourses last fortnight, the week will come that the Yen, Dollar and Euro will crater. The Chinese are probably waiting very patiently for that week to drop their trillion and a half US dollar bomb on the forex market to bury the greenback, while they can simultaneously protest their innocence that they were only trying to save whatever value they could still salvage.
Which brings one the strange dilemma - how can I preserve my current net worth? Commodities, Financial Instruments, Stocks are all falling through the tubes, and now cash ain't going to help either? I think the opinion of the Omaha Oracle is the best bet now. Unless you're going to buy yourself a private island and stock it with provisions for the next decade, you'll be best off buying US stocks. They will probably be somewhat volatile over the next few years and recover slowly, but they will retain INHERENT VALUE. They are issued by companies which provide necessary goods and managed by a board focused on making enough money to cover their bonuses, as opposed to a Government which produces nothing but war and was run last time I looked, by a bunch of idiots.
7
Oct 28, 2008 at 08:56 AM Anonymous Says:
i make 600 a week i can only dream.