The Best And Worst Of W.Buffet's Investments

Shareholders who have stuck with Warren Buffett, 79, for the very long haul have been amply rewarded, but the ride has not always been smooth.

Warren Buffett may be the world's most famous investor, but even he doesn't get everything right.

Berkshire Hathaway Inc, the insurance company Buffett has run since 1965 and which is holding its annual meeting on Saturday in Omaha, Nebraska, owns roughly 80 companies and invests in dozens of stocks.

It is sometimes said that even the best investors might get only six out of every 10 bets right. So while shareholders who have stuck with Mr. Buffett, 79, for the very long haul have been amply rewarded, the ride has not always been smooth.

The following are a handful of Berkshire's investments over the years - the good, the bad and the unknown.

THE GOOD

• In 1976, Berkshire began accumulating an equity stake in auto insurer Geico Corp, 24 years after selling an earlier stake for US$15,259. It finished buying Geico in 1996. The acquisition brought aboard Tony Nicely, who still runs Geico and whose leadership Buffett has lavishly praised, and Lou Simpson, whom Mr. Buffett has said could replace him as Berkshire's chief investment officer but for the fact that he, too, is in his 70s. Geico has roughly tripled its U.S. auto insurance market share to 8.1% since Berkshire bought the entire company. The insurer generated about 12% of Berkshire's revenue in 2009.

• In 1989, Berkshire bought US$600-million of preferred stock in Gillette Co, the razor blade maker that had been hurt by the introduction of disposable razors. In 2005, Gillette was acquired by Procter & Gamble Co. Although it sold some Procter & Gamble shares in late 2009 to fund other investments, Berkshire at year end still held a 2.9% stake worth US$5.04-billion, and for which it had paid just US$533-million. While Mr. Buffett in his 1995 shareholder letter called Gillette "our best holding," he also said he made his "biggest mistake" by opting to buy preferred stock rather than common stock.

• Berkshire owns 200 million Coca-Cola Co shares, an 8.6% stake it had amassed by 1994. The stake was worth US$11.4-billion at year end. Berkshire paid US$1.3-billion for it.

THE BAD

• In 1993, Berkshire bought Dexter Shoe for US$433-million in stock. Eight years later, it folded the struggling company into another business. In his 2007 shareholder letter, Mr. Buffett called Dexter Shoe "the worst deal that I've made."

• In 2008, Mr. Buffett amassed a large stake in oil company ConocoPhillips, not expecting oil prices to fall by about three-fourths from their record high. Berkshire spent US$7.01-billion on Conoco shares, but has been reducing its stake. "The terrible timing of my purchase has cost Berkshire several billion dollars," Mr. Buffett said last year.

THE UNKNOWN

• Buffett has entered into derivatives contracts, most of which are essentially bets on the long-term direction of stocks and junk bonds. He has said these contracts differ from other derivatives that are "financial weapons of mass destruction" in part because of the billions of dollars of premiums he collects upfront from counterparties, and because Berkshire generally does not need to post collateral.

Berkshire has four major types of contracts:

* Berkshire has equity index "put" options tied to where the Standard & Poor's 500, Britain's FTSE 100, Europe's Euro Stoxx 50 and Japan's Nikkei 225 trade between June 2018 and January 2028. At year end, Berkshire had a US$7.31-billion paper liability on these contracts and said it could in theory owe US$37.99-billion if the indexes all went to zero.

* Berkshire has contracts tied to credit losses in higher-risk "junk" bonds, which at year end were on average expected to mature in two years. At year end, Berkshire had a US$781-million paper liability on the contracts and said it could in theory owe up to US$5.53-billion.

* Berkshire wrote credit default swaps on various companies, mostly investment-grade. At year's end, Berkshire had no liability on these contracts.

* Berkshire entered into tax-exempt bond insurance contracts structured as derivatives. At year end, Berkshire had an US$853-million liability and US$16.04-billion of potential losses. The bonds are largely secured by states' taxing and borrowing power.

* In September 2008, at the height of the financial crisis, Berkshire acquired US$5-billion of Goldman Sachs Group Inc preferred shares that throw off a 10% dividend, plus warrants to buy an equivalent amount of common stock. The warrants carry a strike price of US$115. Goldman shares closed Tuesday at US$153.04, and those warrants are well in the money.

© Thomson Reuters 2010

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Carrigan: Be careful to manage your risk

Last Tuesday most of the major global stock indices tumbled in reaction to the downgrade of Greek bonds to junk status and the Goldman Sachs testimony before a U.S. Senate committee in Washington.

A few weeks ago I mused here that bear markets tend to frighten investors and bull markets tend to confuse investors. If bearish investors are to assume they are “fearful,” they should keep in mind that equity markets usually react only once to a crisis.

Now the Goldman fiasco may be a crisis for Goldman but it is not a crisis on the global stage. The Greek default issue is hardly a new surprise, given the county’s long history of default problems.

This leaves us with the bull market option of “confusion” because the equity markets have been advancing and investors still don’t “feel” that the financial crisis or U.S. housing bubble has been resolved.

For most long-term equity investors the best approach is to adopt a “crisis, what crisis?” attitude and learn to live with a constant state of confusion. In other words learn to live with some degree of investing discomfort. The best way to cope with investing discomfort is to adopt some common sense rules and restraints.

Here are a few things not to do.

Don’t time the market because for the most part the market advances at least 60 per cent of the time. The problem here is if you manage to sell out at a “top” there is a tendency to remain in cash too long and then miss out on the next bull market advance.

Don’t place a big bet on the “next big thing” or anything that is getting excessive hype in the business media. The next time you “get a hunch to buy a bunch,” take a deep breath and get a second opinion from an experienced adviser.

Here is what you can do.

You can be your own portfolio manager. As a portfolio manager you need only to adopt a few restraints and understand the terms Systematic Risk and Specific Risk

Some of the restraints would be to have some degree of diversification and limit your exposure to any single asset class or group of related securities. For example the ownership of five bank stocks, three life-co stocks and five energy stocks adds up to 13 positions but it also means you have placed a big bet on only two sectors, energy and financial. Keep in mind that some nasty corrections are sector related. We had the technology crash of 2000, the income trust crash of November 2006 and the banking crisis of 2008.

The term Specific Risk refers to the portfolio risk associated with a big bet on an individual security or related assets such as energy or technology stocks. Specific risk can be diversified away be limiting total exposure to any one stock to 10 per cent or any single asset class to 20 per cent.

The term Systematic Risk refers to the risk common to all securities in the portfolio such as the bull and bear cycles of the equity markets. As a rule Systematic Risk cannot be diversified away unless we use another tool of the portfolio manager - the short position or the non-correlated asset that will cushion any nasty corrections in the broader markets. The act of shorting stocks is for the most part not an option for most investors and so a better option is to seek out stocks or asset classes that generally operate inversely to the broader equity markets.

One stock group or asset class that will from tine to time operate inversely is precious metals. Lately the group has offered some downside protection but unfortunately during the 2008 financial crisis the gold stocks collapsed with all the other stock groups.

Our chart is the daily closes of the continual natural gas contract plotted above the continual crude oil contact. Their price relationship is unusual in that while both are energy-related they have been operating inversely. We also know that the price of crude and the direction of our own S&P/TSX Composite are highly correlated.

Now as my own portfolio manager I will now assume that if I insert some “gassy” energy stocks into my portfolio I have the best of both worlds – some down-side protection and the possibility of a bullish recovery in a depressed gassy sector.

Bill Carrigan, CIM, is an independent stock-market analyst.