Warren Buffett’s interview is easily the highlight of this week. There were several wow moments there, but let me just talk about a couple of them here.
First is when Buffett talks about owning 5.5% of IBM and says that he has never spoken to the leadership at IBM – and that IBM will come to know of his ownership through this interview!
That’s pretty amazing and is consistent with his investments in the past. It emphasizes that you don’t need access to the management or have any knowledge of a company’s affairs outside of what’s available in the public domain to make successful investments.
Secondly, he said something very insightful when asked about how he processes all the uncertainty that exists today. Here is what he said.
BUFFETT: The world’s always uncertain. The world was uncertain on December 6th, 1941, we just didn’t know it. The world was uncertain on October 18th, 1987, you know, we just didn’t know it. The world was uncertain on September 10th, 2001, we just didn’t know it. The world—there’s always uncertainty. Now the question is, what do you do with your money? And if you—the one thing is if you leave it in your pocket, it’ll become worth less—not worthless—worth less over time. That’s certain—that’s almost certain. You can put it in bonds and then you can get a certain 2 percent for 10 years and that’s almost certain to be less than the decline and the purchasing power. You can put it in farms and the farms will probably keep growing corn and soybeans and they’ll grow it whether, you know, whether Italy has trouble tomorrow or not. It’s very interesting to me, if you own a farm and somebody said, you know, Italy’s got problems. Do you sell your farm tomorrow?
The way most people talk about the economic situation is exactly opposite of this but when you think about things in this light – that makes it a lot easier for you to process information without getting into panics and hold on to your stocks a lot longer than you otherwise would have.
On to other things – MoneySights declared that they were removing all charges and becoming free for the users. I know there were a couple of questions about this in the Suggest a Topic section so there has certainly been interest in their platform among readers here.
The finance ministry has given the nod to FDI in multi brand retail. Allowing big foreign players like Walmart in the Indian retail space will be a great thing. It will lower costs for the consumers, farmers should get better prices because big retailers will be able to cut middle men and better infrastructure should lead to significantly reduced wastage of food. I think this is great news and a step in the positive direction.
Not all news is good though – Macquarie has cut its India growth forecast to under 7% for the next fiscal.
Beyondbrics has a chart that shows the ratio of internet users and total population in the BRIC nations. India has the lowest penetration.
There has been a lot of noise about the heated Chinese real estate market and according to government statistics house prices fell 0.15% month on month in the 70 cities that they monitor.
Finally, the whole story of Ramayana in this incredible infographic.
Enjoy your weekend!
I quite liked the concept of Household units Vs Housing units. I think it’s probably one of the most sensible arguments i have heard in sometime on real estate !!
What about the idea of uncertainty – that was quite easily my favorite part – never thought of anything like that – what did you make of that?
Thanks for informing about moneysights going free to OneMint readers, Manshu.
If any of OneMint reader here requires any further info, please feel free to get in touch with us over twitter or write in an email to [email protected]. We will be more than happy to help.
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Santosh Navlani | moneysights | making investing simple
You’re welcome Santosh.