Well, Failure can definitely change your perspective. When your investments go bad, the unthinkable can happen. Even Warren Buffett, the most revered and successful of investors can be termed “Idiots” by other market participants eager to savage the more vulnerable ones.
The Oregonian reported that Newsletter writer and frequent CNBC guest Dennis Gartman had in an interview scoffed at value-oriented, buy-and-hold stock investors who incurred deep losses last year. “Warren Buffett is an idiot, ” he reportedly said, emphatically, in a short interview after the speech. “Shame on Warren Buffett. That’ll be a good quote for your article.”
Dennis Gartman was described as speaking like his trades — in simple, direct, repetitive language. His mantra: “Do more of the things that have worked,” he is said to have described his bottom-line philosophy. “And try, try, to do less of the things that have not. If you do that in life, it’ll work.”
It is said that Gartman’s detailed, daily newsletter has been followed faithfully by traders for more than 20 years and that his opinionated, simple speaking style and experience regularly lands him on CNBC’s Squawk Box and Fast Money.
Of course, CNBC reported that Dennis Gartman was quick to do a somersault and wasn’t standing behind his “Warren Buffett is an idiot” quote. He did however maintain Warren Buffet’s trades were “inexcusable” on the ground that Berkshire Hathaway fell roughly 45 percent in one year because Buffett didn’t do enough to “mitigate” his losses in a tough market environment.
CNBC noted that at its early-March closing low of $72,400, Berkshire was down over 48 percent from where it was 12 months before. For the 2008 calendar year, Berkshire was down 32 percent, outperforming the benchmark S&P’s drop of over 38 percent.)
In the dog-eat-dog world of finance, there are no gods. Only he who makes money is GOD.
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