Fear is the foe of the faddist, but the friend of the fundamentalist
A Bloomberg report (Buffett Broadens Portfolio by Spending $23.9 Billion in Quarter) dated Nov 7, 2011, said that Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc invested US$23.9 billion in the third-quarter, the most in at least 15 years, as he accelerated stock purchases and broadened the portfolio beyond consumer and financial-company holdings.
“Buffett, 81, drew down Berkshire’s cash as Europe’s debt crisis and Standard & Poor’s downgrade of the US pushed stocks to their worst quarterly performance since 2008. The investments disclosed Nov 4 include $6.9 billion of equities, $5 billion for preferred shares and warrants in Bank of America Corp. and the acquisition of Lubrizol Corp. for about $9 billion,” the report said.
Why was Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway investing at a time when market sentiment had been hit by eurozone crisis and US economic woes?
Mr Buffett’s letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders (March 7, 1995) for Year 1994 gave an insight into his investment approach.
“We will continue to ignore political and economic forecasts, which are an expensive distraction for many investors and businessmen. Thirty years ago, no one could have foreseen the huge expansion of the Vietnam War, wage and price controls, two oil shocks, the resignation of a president, the dissolution of
the Soviet Union, a one-day drop in the Dow of 508 points, or treasury bill yields fluctuating between 2.8% and 17.4%,” the Year 1994 letter said.
Mr Buffett went on to say in the letter: “But, surprise – none of these blockbuster events made the slightest dent in Ben Graham’s investment principles. Nor did they render unsound the negotiated purchases of fine businesses at sensible prices. Imagine the cost to us, then, if we had let a fear of unknowns cause us to defer or alter the deployment of capital. Indeed, we have usually made our best purchases when apprehensions about some macro event were at a peak. Fear is the foe of the faddist, but the friend of the fundamentalist.”
To underscore this point, Mr Buffett also said in the Year 1994 letter: “A different set of major shocks is sure to occur in the next 30 years. We will neither try to predict these nor to profit from them. If we can identify businesses similar to those we have purchased in the past, external surprises will have little effect on our long-term results.”
Recommended reading:
(1) The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America, Third Edition
