Blog It As It Is - BIAS

These days when I blog, there's this nagging self censorship that stops me from finishing my blog article, or from publishing it. It's this new-found sensibility to others that I find it irritating. If this goes on further, I'll have nothing more to write!

To remedy this situation, I will follow dream's blog and do my own "dream's speak", a special feature where I get to say anything I like with scant regards to others. This will keep my mind free from the annoying self censorship that kills off my articles at its infancy.

So here it goes, my very first "Blog It As it iS" or "BIAS"...


** "BIAS" is a special feature in my blog where I get to say whatever I want with scant regards for your feelings. I'm not politically correct in this feature, so go ahead, judge me."


There are some people, after reading some books on investing, especially books on Buffett, then declare themselves value investors. I would say that books on Buffett do more harm on people than good. Why? Most of them are simplistic one liner like "Hold for the long term". Yea right, in the long term, we're all dead.

I therefore cringe whenever I hear the word 'long-term' being uttered. A shiver of uneasiness will creep up my spine. Here are some thoughts regarding the B man:


1. Buffett is a good investor and businessman. He buys in such a big amount to be able to sit in the board and do some major changes, possibly for his own interests. He did that for Salomon brothers and came out unscathed. Are you able to do the same? When he means ownership of company, he really means it! What are you? Are you able to buy 30% of the floating shares to influence the management?


2. Buffett has some glaring contradictions. First he said derivatives are instruments of mass destruction, but he also bought it. Then he said charts are for ninnies, but his dad is a stock broker and he might have learnt a trick or two from him. I dunno. He said splitting shares has no value add and he had shown great dislike for companies doing that. In the end, he did the same for his B-shares to buy some toy train.

Win liao loh, everything also he said one.


3. Buffett is a man of great influence. When he says buy, people will believe him. That's why whatever company he fancies buying, the stock price will rise up. How can one lose money like that? If I say digiland is good buy, people will just ignore me. Not so for B man. If I can influence people to that level, of course there's no need to read charts. For that matter, there's no need to read the statements too.


4. Last for now, all the books written about the world's greatest investor are not written by him. It can be his ex-daughter-in-law who adopted the same surname as him, it can be some other unknown people who happened to meet him drinking cherry coke and snapped a picture with him. How did B man do his valuation? Nobody knows...we can only speculate how he did it.


If there's anything to learn from B man, it's how he changes his opinion accordingly to times. He studied under Graham but found that it's a bit outdated, so he mixed with Fisher and combine powers to create his own way. That's unique. If you can't evolve and adapt like Buffett, forget about using his methods. For one thing, that method you're using might not even be his method.