Word: fall
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...price spread chaos across the market as Buffett called for delivery of more than 42 million oz. of the silver he had bought--after already having some 87 million oz. in tow. Panicky short sellers, who had borrowed silver and sold it in the expectation that the price would fall, had to swallow huge losses to complete the deals. Major buyers of silver like Eastman Kodak, which processes millions of ounces a year into film, faced big increases in raw-material costs. And everywhere families began eyeing grandma's precious flatware as a possible source of cash. "We think...
...forthcoming, and there is no reason to doubt his word. But there's also a bigger picture that's worth a look. At Berkshire's annual meeting last year, Buffett warned that the stock market was presenting few bargains and that investors should expect dramatically lower returns. Just last fall he bought $2 billion of--gasp!--long-term Treasury bonds, an investment that betrays some concern about stocks. Now he turns around and buys enough silver to make the Hunts jealous. Could it be that Buffett has soured on the stock market...
...Buffett has been moving to protect against both risks. The T-bonds he bought last fall give him a hedge against deflation. Their value would soar if the economy soured and knocked down interest rates. The silver he just picked up gives him a hedge on the other side. The metal would gain value along with other commodities in a heated economy that raised inflation and interest rates. But small investors should be wary of following Buffett into silver lest he decide to take his profits and run. "How long will this last?" asks Moore of Flemings Global. "Buffett...
...decade. The periodic warming of Pacific Ocean waters that plays havoc with the world's weather was supposed to be the El Nino of the century--worse even than the great El Nino of 1982-83, which left thousands dead and caused $13 billion in property damage. By last fall, however, El Nino had wreaked only piddling levels of destruction in the U.S., and the public was beginning to see it less as an impending apocalypse than as a gimmick to sell 4-by-4s and generate guaranteed laughs for late-night comedians...
Sometimes there can be a wide gulf between the two. In Australia, for example, El Nino caused extremely dry conditions that for a while last year had farmers contemplating suicide. But as it turns out, some rain did fall--just in time to rescue the wheat harvest from disaster. Does that mean the drought predictions were wrong? Not at all, says Nicholas Graham, a climate modeler at the University of California at San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Think of what El Nino does as the equivalent of rigging a roulette wheel so that it comes up black...