Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Strategies & Market Trends : Buffettology -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Chuzzlewit who wrote (811)	12/27/1998 4:20:00 PM
From: Tomato	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 4691

I was thinking about a given on this thread, to wit: WEB is the world's greatest investor I thought I might challenge that assumption as an exercise to keep everyone on their toes. If you go by percentage gain, I don't know if WEB is the world champion. Doesn't George Soros have him beat? [I can hear people shouting that Soros is a trader, not an investor, but I personally reject that distinction. I assume WEB's advocates would argue an investor like WEB has a margin of safety and thus eliminates risk, but since all of life is a gamble, and even WEB has made mistakes, I think that is intellectually dishonest] If anyone has read Market Wizards or New Market Wizards, they must be left with the impression that there are lots of people out there that are outperforming Buffett. And if you want to put avoidance of risk high up on your wish list, Gil Blake, to my mind, can't be beat. He's the guy who guaranteed his investors 20% a year and has as far as I know always delivered over 20% for about 20?? years now. He just uses technical factors he finds by combing historical data. I think if I had a choice between investing money with him or putting it in BRK, I'd put it with Blake. Unfortunately, Blake is not taking on new investors. And what of some poor shmuck who worked at Walmart or Microsoft way back when and had some investment plan at work that put a percentage of their wages into the company stock. Bet they did better than WEB! Some guys at Walmart may have outperformed WEB over the past for 30 years, too. I confess however, that that's kind of like putting 1000 monkeys at a typewriter and eventually you get Hamlet! Then there was one guy in the Wizards book who repeately won some investing contest with astronomical returns of over 700% - Schwartz or Weinstein, I believe. Wouldn't you have to say they were better at making money in the market than WEB? There may be a lot of low profile people out there that have done better than WEB over a long period of time. Maybe it's like that zen saying, "Those who know do not speak; those who speak do not know." I guess my point is that maybe WEB isn't the best out there, and we shouldn't assume that to be true.