CNBC Looks Back At Warren Buffett’s ‘Buy American’ Op-Ed
CNBC’s Alex Crippen noted today that it’s been almost one year since legendary investor Warren Buffett wrote his famous “Buy American” op-ed in the New York Times.
For those of you who don’t remember the piece, it can still be found on the Times website here.
Crippen wrote on the CNBC website:
One year ago, even though the financial world was “a mess” and would probably get messier, Warren Buffett wrote in the New York Times that he was buying U.S. stocks to lock in a “slice of America’s future at a marked-down price.”
He cited his “simple” rule: “Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful.”
The second richest man in the world wasn’t trying to call a market bottom. Crippen added:
In his op-ed, Buffett makes clear he wasn’t trying to “time” the market. He wrote he didn’t have the “faintest idea” whether stocks would be higher or lower one month, or one year later. Both qualify as short-term for Buffett. He was looking five, ten, or twenty years into the future.
The CNBC executive producer noted that it was a good thing Buffett wasn’t trying to call a bottom for equities, for if the Omaha-based investor had synchronized his stock buying with the date the op-ed piece was published, his timing would have been “awful.” Crippen also pointed out that if you had starting buying the S&P on March 9, when the market bottomed, you’d be up 60 percent.
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However, none of this should take away from Buffett’s main message. Crippen wrote:
But Buffett’s key point is that very few of us are going to be that smart or that lucky. Those waiting for the perfect moment run a big risk of coming in too late, especially if they’re looking for hints that things are getting better.
The Oracle of Omaha won’t make predictions about specific stock market moves, but he does have one strongly-held prophecy about the future: “The market will move higher, perhaps substantially so, well before either sentiment or the economy turns up. So if you wait for the robins, spring will be over.”
Source:
“Warren Buffett’s ‘Buy American’ – One Year Later”
Alex Crippen
CNBC, October 19, 2009
