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Originally Posted by BoredSocial
Speaking as an investor why does it matter if he gets advantages not available to retail stock pickers? These acquisitions he gets for being WB at prices he gets for being WB are very good for the shareholders.
Sure, but at his size they become an increasingly smaller part of the edge and he's left picking public equities mostly. He says this himself. And his modern record at picking equities is suckful.
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Assuming his replacement understands what he was selling these people (autonomy, never having to worry about hitting their numbers artificially ever again, and unlimited capital for expansion if it makes sense) I don't see why that pool of deals would dry up. You're also making statements that won't have a prayer of being valid until he continues to 'underperform' through the next bear market. His pattern of underperforming at the top and massively overperforming at the bottom is like 50 years old. Him being in that situation yet again is proof of exactly nothing.
This is just false all around. Buffett crushed the index through good times and bad for decades - he was truly a legend at deep value - then started underperforming in the late 90s in his public stock picks. He seems to not have an edge any more.
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He's a value investor. Look at his performance relative to other value investors through the last few years. Looks to me like he's outperforming them by being very selective and not lighting vast amounts of money on fire trying to keep up with the index. His big SPX put bet worked out. Without having him explain exactly why he took that trade step by step I don't think you're remotely qualified to judge whether he had any edge there.
lol? The point being that it was an edge purchased at risk. You're simulatneously claiming he's doing badly now but will overperform in a bear market while he's short a huge number of SPY puts. No quite computing that one.
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I will say that his record on exotic stuff like that is simply stellar, and if it was taken in a vacuum would make him look like what he is, which is one of the best traders in the world.
All of his structural advantages and all of his wonderful trading and all of his extra risk come up as negatives when you consider the fact he hasn't beaten the index in a long time. The more strongly you advocate for the genius of each segment of what he does, the more strongly you're advocating that there's something rotten with his stock picks and the rest of the business. He hasn't beaten the index in a long time.