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Technology Stocks : How high will Microsoft fly? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Joseph Pareti who wrote (56592)	3/12/2001 4:54:59 PM
From: Milan Shah	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74651

What exactly does the table at the start show? If I were to believe the table, it would tell me that BRK has never ended the year lower than when it started. However, if you look it up, in Jan 99 they were at 65000 on Jan 1, 1999, and at 56100 on Dec 31, 1999, which seems like a negative growth rate for the year for someone that invested on Jan 1, 1999. I am sure the key to the mystery is that the table talks about "book value per share", not the value of the share itself. Also, I doubt whether this post will cast any doubt on Buffett's reputation. I bring this up only because of what personally happened to me. I actually had the good fortune to pull out all my money in April of 2000, a bit after the peak was reached. I then dedicated almost a month to figuring out if and where I should get help to manage my networth. The conclusion I drew then is that if you try to select a money manager, you might as well select individual stocks (and the management that runs that stock). See, I found, that even if I had picked Mr. Buffett, he would have sliced my net worth in half "today". The only piece of advice that rang a bell with me was that the US economy can be expected to grow in the long term, so bet on the economy - bet on the S&P 500. It will eventually grow. So, I proceeded to put a bulk of my net worth in an S&P 500 fund. Now, I am down 15% in that part; had I picked BRK in April 2000, I would have been sitting on a 50+% gain... Finally, if I were to apply the same kind of logic that Mr. Buffett applies to BRK, I don't see how its a buy - its sitting at a PE of 48 for one, and, even though its earnings grew by some 70-100% from last year, I very much have a hard time seeing how stellar companies like Gillette, American Express, and Coke can double their incomes in the future... Milan