Word: buffett
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This might be the year that the rest of us got smarter than Warren Buffett. America's best-known investing whiz runs Berkshire Hathaway, pals around with Bill Gates and famously shuns tech stocks. Yet tech stocks, the day traders' favorite food, have sustained the market, while Berkshire's A-class stock is down 19% and headed for its first losing year since 1990. By the end of last week, when stocks in general were bruised by fears of inflation and mixed earnings reports, the company had lost $20 billion of market value...
...superstar stock picker, Buffett has taken Berkshire's shareholders for an amazing ride, largely on the backs of stocks like Gillette, Coca-Cola and Disney. If you had put $10,000 in Berkshire when Buffett bought control in 1965, it would be worth $51 million today--literally 100 times the gain of the Standard & Poor's 500. Buffett's investment success has long overwhelmed Berkshire's other side, which owns and operates companies in aviation, furniture, insurance and fast food. Profits from those businesses traditionally haven't helped in evaluating Berkshire because investment gains have meant so much more...
That's still the case. But a shift is under way, one that has highlighted Berkshire's operating performance, and is forcing Wall Street to change the way it looks at the stock. Buffett has been buying more whole companies than company shares in recent years. Just last week he signed a deal to buy all of Jordan's Furniture, a New England retailer with $250 million in annual sales. His biggest deals, though, have been in insurance, starting with auto insurer Geico in 1996 and then the $22 billion acquisition of reinsurer General...
...process, Buffett has rebalanced Berkshire in startling fashion. The company's vaunted stock portfolio accounts for just 33% of Berkshire's total assets. As recently as 1995, the stocks accounted for a whopping 76% of assets. "To keep thinking of Berkshire as a big stock fund is absurd," asserts Alice Schroeder, an insurance analyst at PaineWebber. She began covering the company this year, underscoring Berkshire's insurance bent...
...Katie Buffett has joined a growing, albeit still elite, list of Americans who have opted out of the joys of flying with commercial airlines. She recently bought a share in a private plane because her favorite nephew told her it would be a good idea. The nephew, billionaire investor Warren Buffett, thinks many more people will pay to avoid cooling their heels at gates and cramping their backsides into uncomfortable seats in the air. Buffett spent $725 million last year to acquire Executive Jet Aviation, operator of NetJets, which created a business in fractional ownership of aircraft. With revenues projected...