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Warren Buffett - Lucky Coin Flipper?
Submitted by Bill Bonner via Acting-Man blog,
The King of Lydia
“Count no man happy until he be dead,” said Athenian statesman and poet Solon.
The man to whom Solon gave the advice was the richest man alive at the time (the 6th century B.C.) – the king of Lydia, Croesus.
Croesus considered himself to be the happiest man alive. But he discovered that fortune could turn against you, no matter how rich and powerful you were. His son died in an accident. His wife committed suicide. And he was captured and burned alive by Cyrus, king of Persia.
And now, poor Warren Buffett must be feeling the heat. He’s 84 years old and the most successful investor of all time. Respected. Admired. Beloved, especially by the thousands of people he has made into millionaires. And “as rich as Croesus” himself. Buffett celebrated the golden anniversary of his investment conglomerate, Berkshire Hathaway, last week. And what a success!

Croesus and Solon , painting by Gerard van Honthorst, 1624
He turned every dollar invested in 1965 into $182,616 today. For 30 years, he never had a 10-year compound annual gain of less than 20%. Over 50 years his compound annual gain has been 21% – or just over twice that of the S&P 500, including dividends.
And now, Berkshire is worth $367 billion and has $195 billion in annual revenues.
If money were what really matters, Warren Buffett would have no peer. He has had unparalleled success in this world; surely he has a first-class ticket to the next. And if his good fortune were of his own making, what would he have to fear?
Skill or Luck?
But what if fortune, which smiled on him so broadly for so many years, begins to frown? That idea was raised back in 1984 on another 50th anniversary – the half-century mark following the publication of Benjamin Graham and David Dodd’s classic book on value investing, Security Analysis.
The occasion was used for a debate. On one side was Michael Jensen of the University of Rochester, a leading proponent of the Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH). (In a nutshell the EMH states that investors can’t get above-average returns without taking above-average risk.)
Jensen argued that Buffett’s success was a matter of chance. On the other side was Buffett… who argued that skill, not luck, was behind his, and a select group of value investors’, impressive track records. Jensen began by pointing out that when you have a nation of coin flippers, a few – by sheer dumb luck – are going to get a long string of heads… and therefore be viewed as “winners.”
Yes, said Buffett, but if all of those who were getting heads were all using the same technique (value investing) it should make you wonder. It would be as though there were a town where no one ever got cancer: You’d want to know what they were having for dinner.
Buffett – who had been a student of Graham at Columbia Business School – attributed his early success to the aforementioned Security Analysis as well as Graham’s 1949 book, The Intelligent Investor. The Intelligent Investor was at least the Old Testament part of Buffett’s investment bible. He was to write the New Testament himself, fulfilling the prophecy laid out by his mentor.
“He who comes after me comes before me,” Graham might have said… had he realized what his young acolyte from Omaha would achieve.

Meet professor Jensen, who insists that Warren Buffett just got lucky. It is only marginally surprising that he is a professional economist rather than an investor or an entrepreneur, but one cannot dismiss his ideas out of hand.
Screenshot via georgetown.edu
Dating or Marriage?
As Buffett explains in his 50th letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders, Graham taught him “cigar butt” investing. The idea was to find troubled companies (with declining margins, an obsolete business model or overhanging litigation)… buy them ultra cheap… and have “one puff” on them as they rose back to fair value. That worked beautifully, for many years.
But then Buffett went beyond Graham. He started to buy the whole cigar company. Instead of just looking at price, as Graham had, Buffett started to look for businesses that had a sustainable competitive advantage.
As Buffett put it, he would rather own a comfortable business at a questionable price than a questionable business at a comfortable price. Crucially, this allowed him to hold his investments for the ultra-long term. As he put it in the recent shareholder letter:
[T]hough marginal businesses purchased at cheap prices may be attractive as short-term investments, they are the wrong foundation on which to build a large and enduring enterprise. Selecting a marriage partner clearly requires more demanding criteria than does dating.
This focus on quality over price is what turned Berkshire Hathaway into such a money machine for Buffett and his partner, Charlie Munger. For 36 years, the duo tossed their coins and got heads every year.

The lucky coin tossers! Getting heads for 36 years in a row. Somehow, it always seemed their activity was a not-so-random walk down Wall Street. However, things got more difficult for them when the secular bull market was no longer providing a tailwind.
Photo credit: Nati Harnik / AP
Moving the Goalposts
But in 2000, the tails began to appear. You may say that Buffett and Munger “changed their strategy.” Or they “made a mistake.” But if their success were based on skill, why would they suddenly forget how to make money?
“Berkshire’s investment portfolio performance has been extremely poor for at least the last 14 years,” writes colleague Porter Stansberry. Between 1970 and 2000, the lowest 10-year annualized return on Berkshire’s investment portfolio was 20.5%.
Starting in 2000, however, the wheels come off. Between 2000 and 2010, the annualized return was 6.6%. And, after never recording an annual decrease in book value, Buffett lost money twice in the 10-year period (2001 and 2008). Relative to the S&P 500, these numbers haven’t gotten better since 2010.
In 2011, Berkshire’s portfolio return was 4%. (The S&P 500 was up 2.1%.)
In 2012, Berkshire’s portfolio return was 15.7%. (The S&P 500 was up 16%.)
In 2013, Berkshire’s portfolio was up 13.6%. (The S&P 500 was up 32.4%.)
In 2014, Berkshire’s portfolio was up 8.4%. (The S&P 500 was up 13.7%.)
Last week, Buffett moved the goalposts. Instead of reporting Berkshire’s results in terms of book value only, he showed how well the company did in terms of share price. Why he did this is a matter of some controversy. Did he do it, as he claimed, because book value no longer gives an accurate picture of the value of his “sprawling conglomerate”?
Or did he do it because the gods have turned against him; his book value increases have underperformed the S&P 500 for the last 14 years and it is becoming embarrassing? Barron’s offers an opinion:
“Buffett probably can be faulted for not being forthright in the letter about the disappointing performance of the Berkshire equity portfolio that he oversees. Of the company’s big four holdings, American Express, IBM, Coca-Cola and Wells Fargo, only Wells Fargo has been a notable winner in recent years. […]
Buffett tends to manage the portfolio’s largest and longest-standing investments. Two managers who help run the rest, Todd Combs and Ted Weschler, have outperformed Buffett in the past few years.”
Is that Mr. Jensen we hear laughing?
Berkshire Hathaway A over the past 20 years. Warren Buffett had a golden touch, but he was certainly helped by the fact that he started out just as the biggest and longest stock market mania in history commenced. Even so, he did beat the market handsomely for quite a long period of time. As Berkshire became bigger, it presumably became harder to achieve the same growth rates as before. The stock trades at a significant premium to NAV, which can probably be ascribed to “widespread faith in Warren” – via StockCharts, click to enlarge.
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Luck favors those with hundreds of lobbyists and attorneys.
In a sense life is luck. Who cares. Stupid article.
BTFDAX BUFFET
Historically, more than half of proprietary trading profits comes from sector investing - simply being in the right sector.
What if you knew the monetary cycle and were primarily placing yourself in the right sector over decade long periods.
It would make you love the monetary cycle - and hate gold.
What if your dad was Congressman Howard Buffett who spent his life fighting the Federal Reserve and fighting for a sound gold money system.
What if you realized that your dad's knowledge could make a lot of money if you used it for yourself?
If you saw a monetary system crash were coming, you might want to start investing in energy efficient transportation (rail), cheap foodstuffs, trailer home manufacturers, etc. With your rail company, you could make money both shipping crude oil produced in the US (tough to import oil if your curency is toast) as well as make some dough shipping people to FEMA camps.
haha, my dyslexia first read that headline as...
"Warren Buffett - Clucky Loin Fluffer"
So the takeaway is that Buffett and Munger are tossers - got it.
Of course there is not merit in what he did... it was pure luck!!!!!
Wow, somehow my mediocrity feels better now.
My takeaway is that Buffett used basic tools such as sustainable competitive advantage, selecting worthy management, etc. but his greatest advantage was sector investing knowledge from understanding the monetary cycle. The monetary cycle only appears in the fiat money central banking system.
Remember Buffetts wisdom to the masses: gold sucks because you dig it out of the ground and then bury it in a safe.
That paper money systems are manipulated to benefit the financial elite and then collapse leading to mass chaos and starvation is a minor detail.
The $1 to $185,000 aspect of this is HUGELY misleading, the least of which is that it's not inflation adjusted - SEE CHART IN LINK BELOW (which alone would reduce it to approximately $2,100 - and this is before taxes and other transaction fees, etc, of which there are many - that $2,100 is likely to be closer to $1,100 post taxation & transaction fees).
Second, that's massively outsized performance over a 50 year period of never selling, and re-investing every penny of dividends.
THERE IS A REASON WHY WHO'S WHOS WERE LINING UP TO GIVE BERNIE MADOFF MONEY WHEN THEY LEARNED HE WAS GENERATING 8% ANNUAL RETURNS - FAR FROM THE 21% BUFFET GROSSED BEFORE THE FEES DISCUSSED BELOW - IT'S AN ANOMALY. IT HAS A .0003% CHANCE OF BEING REAL.
For a realistic estimate of broad based S&P 500 returns on an average annual basis, the academic research indicates it's 5.6% on the HIGH side to as little as 3.9% on the low side (EVEN HERE, note that the ''net'' still does not include all relevant attributes such as capital gain tax or transaction costs.)
**"As is apparent from the table, the U.S. stock market generated an annualized return of 10% from 1964 to 2013. However, this is a nominal figure, and long-term investors are usually more concerned by real figures. The real annualized (dividends reinvested) return reached just 5.6%. I think that such a number barely touches the most pessimistic market expectations. Dimson, Marsh and Staunton get the real return of 6.3% with the standard deviation of 20.3% over their 1900-2002 period.
According to my calculation, the net real annualized return of the S&P 500 totals only 3.9%. "**
Here's a comprehensive analysis citing credible academic studies of real returns of stock indexes, which barely beat inflation, and enrich the government & financial industry much more than investors, for those who wish to delve deeper into the fraud that supports most of which comprises "stock market investing."
http://seekingalpha.com/article/2406825-what-is-the-net-real-annualized-...
p.s. - The majority of "stock market investors" who began investing as early as 1998 are still in negative territory, assuming they stayed the course & held through present, even moreso once relevant attributes such as capital gain tax or transaction costs are factored into the equation.
or in short form, where are the customers' yachts?
http://www.bigfatpurse.com/2013/04/where-are-the-customers-yachts-by-fre...
Too bad son Warren didn't take up his father's Libertarianism but rather learned to work the government for billions of dollars.
Warren Buffett is a dirty mutherfucker
i think he prefers kiddies.
Not if he is taking bubble baths with Becky Quick, he doesn't.
#boystown
That's what I was thinking: could we just discover they're pedophiles and get them to shut up once and for all?
Having to hear updates about those two is about as irritating as hearing people ceaselessly crow about the Beardstown Ladies in the 90's.
I'm sure the fact that uncle Warren has more lobbyists in Washington than any other company and now owns himself a magic negro has absolutely nothing to do with his success.
Exactly, you get big enough then you are invited to parties no one else can get into.
See: BofA warrants and Goldman warrants
I think in the past there was a degree of skill, but as information and technology caught up, Uncle Warren has had to resort to dirty tricks
On the plus side, he's helping ramp up DC property values.
speaking of which i like where the folks in d.c. get to smoke pot while they enforce federal marijuana prohibition on most of the rest of the country. that's got to be amusing.
Connectivity rules.
bored with buffett
I thought he turned to pure energy and was battling the sun for total power over the solar system.
Skill. Just like the old-timer Detroit Pensioners who ran the city into the ground over 40 years but still get the pay out….
Folksy Hokum. HAt tip to WB7
And he gets in deals he can't lose. He bought Goldman which was back-stopped by the US govt so that he couldn't lose on his bet. It's not the only time he's been given sweetheart deals.
Is that about 734 billion ice cream cones?
Warren Buffet is 400 years old it doesn't really matter what happens to his fortune. He already won.
"Jensen argued that Buffett’s success was a matter of chance. On the other side was Buffett… who argued that skill, not luck, was behind his, and a select group of value investors’, impressive track records."
or opton #3
Buffet biggest welfare queen of all time (the games fedgov played in 2008/2009 helped immensely in positions held ... wells fargo for starters)
and hoo can forget fall 2008? During the financial crisis fedgov DESPARATELY needed a private investor to step forward to show "confidence" in wall street ... up steps buffet with his $5 billion investment in investment bank goldman sachs ... mere weeks before federal reserve opened discount window to investment banks (and others) saving them all.
NFW did warren buffet step forward (and making billion or more) with $$s without this knowledge
Jensen argued that Buffett’s success was a matter of chance. On the other side was Buffett… who argued that skill, not luck, was behind his, and a select group of value investors’, impressive track records. Jensen began by pointing out that when you have a nation of coin flippers, a few – by sheer dumb luck – are going to get a long string of heads… and therefore be viewed as “winners.”
yeah w h a t e v e r..... to begin with, this "professor" is an ekonomist making him by definition a LOSER
and then the record...
He turned every dollar invested in 1965 into $182,616 today. For 30 years, he never had a 10-year compound annual gain of less than 20%. Over 50 years his compound annual gain has been 21% – or just over twice that of the S&P 500, including dividends.
And now, Berkshire is worth $367 billion and has $195 billion in annual revenues.
and what is this professor's net worth ?
a perceived value as an academic ? (including the toga)
right....
maybe he sees himself as the equivalent of Cyrus... (more like a wannabe)
Croesus considered himself to be the happiest man alive. But he discovered that fortune could turn against you, no matter how rich and powerful you were. His son died in an accident. His wife committed suicide. And he was captured and burned alive by Cyrus, king of Persia.
hmmmm... 'burned alive'... where have i read something similar in some lately news ???
fuck all ekonomists... indeed, maybe THEY should be delivered to those happy-go-burning-folks -lol
So much jealosy.
His partnership with The President stands as a model of what the marriage of the public with the private can do.
We are indeed in good hands.
The pigmen.
Warren Buffet is a Sith Lord in disguise. There's your explanation.
Warren's not failed......He's trying to give it all away. Why should not those nasty whores like Becky Quick get her part? I imagine showing the world your ignorance or ease with which you sell your sole and swallowing 100 Yr Old Buff Juice is not the easiest thing in the World to do.
Cheat to Win. That is his secret.
Ah shucks derivatives are bad, they're "financial weapons of mass destruction." Oh golly gee it turns out I was actually investing in these FWMDs. Somebody get me a Dilly Bar.
"I view derivatives as time bombs, "
"The errors usually reflect the human tendency to take an optimistic view of one’s commitments. But the parties to derivatives also have enormous incentives to cheat in accounting for them"
"I can assure you that the marking errors in the derivatives business have not been symmetrical. Almost invariably, they have favored either the trader who was eyeing a multi-million dollar bonus or the CEO who wanted to report impressive “earnings” (or both). The bonuses were paid, and the CEO profited from his options. Only much later did shareholders learn that the reported earnings were a sham."
"The derivatives genie is now well out of the bottle, and these instruments will almost certainly multiply in variety and number until some event makes their toxicity clear. Central banks and governments have so far found no effective way to control, or even monitor, the risks posed by these contracts. In my view, derivatives are financial weapons of mass destruction, carrying dangers that, while now latent, are potentially lethal."
http://www.fintools.com/docs/Warren%20Buffet%20on%20Derivatives.pdf
"Mr. Buffett once described derivatives as “financial weapons of mass destruction.” Yet some of his most ardent fans have quietly raised eyebrows at his pontifications, given that he plays in the opaque market. In the fourth quarter alone, Berkshire made $222 million on derivatives"
"Mr. Buffett appeared to backpedal from his oft-quoted line, explaining: “I don’t think they’re evil per se. It’s just, they, I mean there’s nothing wrong with having a futures contract or something of the sort. But they do let people engage in massive mischief"
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/03/14/derivatives-as-accused-by-buffett...
Warren (aka Writer of Laws/Bills for his sole tax benefit(s) and limited competition) stated for all to see that his end result for Coke, IBM, Bricks, Flooring, Sees Candies, and Bydu are all failed efforts - especially valued as a conglomerate. A shareholder trap of pending failures, as even he can't beat the Laws of large(AAPL?)return numbers. Not allowing his Empire's cash flows to even earn an average re-invested return anymore says something about a big unspoken problem for these Windows Types Portfolio Allocation Theorists, and as a result, BRK will not be re-investing anymore (deflation sign?)- or into much anything else in your real physical World, so instead relying on just financially engineering stock buybacks and dividends for the next 10 to 20 years. All of which (cash dividends & stock dividends, and buybacks) he has dismissed as not ever doing, as not ever done in the past, and is exactly why the share price is $187,000/share. Flippy Floppy Trillionaires! All made in one Oligarch's lifetime (for his Sons & Grandchildren which are the best non-executive Chairman for the job ahead ;), and now all that moat building benefit is soon gone, now in as little as 10 yrs hence. Here Son, take the wheel and please cash out before driving it all over the cliff! Next, Apple can't re-invest in anything worthy since running out of flash memory uses and some end user ergo programming making a closed-in "rotten environment". Fashionable "L-Loser" i-watches for more Glassy eyed nerds. Bots and millions of faux monthly active users steal for what little time is left, without prejudice, or oversight all across the Gen X's non-monetary social media frontier. Tech is back to 5000~! Amazon's Bezo says no Company can live forever. Just why then should be expect AMZN "to be around in longer term" to pay shareholders back their initial risk capital investment made on a 120 year forward price earnings multiple for their hopeful payback. So a good question: What should BRK forward price earnings multiple valuation model now show? Certainly not a p/e over 15 as it seems you might be able to open a Lemonade stand and earn/make your own intrinsic book value go up as well for a nice change. www.contramanfund.wordpress.com or https://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&u...
"Professor" Jensen is Flat Wrong......As is anyone else who takes that stance....He only Demonstrates his own Ignorance as to the the Real Issue........
When one is unwilling to give Credit where Credit is Amply Due, they deny Credibility to their Words and Views........
Buffett was indeed in "the Right Place at the Right Time" as Bill Gross explains about himself and his Brethren in Bill's Mea Culpa Ante in April 2013.....
Nonetheless, his Success is based on Skill, Not Luck........He is indeed a Talented and Gifted Man who, by the Measure of Benefit to those who "Bet on the Man" stands tall above all others in Markets....
Having Said this, it is the Ultimate Arrogance of ANY Man to believe that his Judgment is Superior to Time....
And this is the "Patent Arrogance of 'Fundamentalism'" ...
In his Annual Letter Buffett Responds to My "Open Letter to Warren Buffett" from last Fall, to which a many of his Brethren have themselves reviewed.....
The Real Issue is that Time is Superior to Judgment.......
And ANY Man who uses his Judgment, as does Buffett, as the PRIMARY input to "Position" will eventually Succumb to Time, the True and Dominate Input in ALL Applications of Capital.....
This is PRECISELY what Markets began to show c. 1998........
Thus as a Consequence of this TRUTH, the only Holders of Berkshire NOW are Suckers, Gamblers and Losers.
As the True Master explained:
"Buy Cheap and Sell Dear"......
The Timelessness and Wisdom of those Words will be Demonstrated in a Stark and Spectacular Way by Berkshire in the Years to Come......
munger looks like a quadraplegic, that has been placed in the chair, and propped up.
the smile reminds me of my niece, right after she filled her diaper.
I had already read that in Bill Bonner's Diary of a Rogue Economist but I want to give a hat tip and thanks here for pointing out Last week, Buffett moved the goalposts including the details.
Buffet is mere moments from Dust to Dust. and you can rest assured this slimey two bit insider motherfucker will be strolling through the Pearly Gates...and probaby take his seat on the throne.
I'm Always awaiting Karma, which never seems to come to those most deserving.
And how is Bill Bonner's performance over the last 50 years?
Buffet is EIGHTY FOUR YEARS OLD and has more money than GOD. No wonder he is slowing down.
Sort of like saying "Einstein Shmeinstein, what has he done lately?"
Anyone who thinks Buffett's performance is pure luck, or knowing the right people, is a moron. He made MILLIONS OF DOLLARS working out of the spare room in his house in Omaha Nebraska before he ever met anyone more influential than the President of the Omaha Rotary Club.