Sam, you may find this piece from this week's Barron's interesting!
It was revealed last week that Prince al-Waleed bin Talal, the multi-billionaire Saudi heir who likes to dabble in stocks, began buying chunks of three media-related companies that panicky Monday, even as the Dow Industrials cascaded 554 points. All in all, he put a neat $850 million to work by buying 5% of News Corp., 1% of Motorola and 5% of Netscape Communications.
It might be thought that such a lavish vote of confidence would have lent strength to the shares in question. But on Monday, when word emerged of which frogs the prince had kissed, Motorola and Netscape posted losses, while News Corp. managed just a fractional gain. True, the Dow sank by 113 points that day on the latest Asian tremors. But surely some investors also were mindful that Prince Waleed's recent record has not been great. Although the Prince has billions of dollars in net worth and a home base well removed from Wall Street, he is no Warren Buffett and has, in fact, picked some real duds over the last year or so.
Looks like I am not alone in judging one of the prince's purchases!
-Mohan |
