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Buffett letter offers great lessons for investors

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As you can tell from this post on my blog, I am no fan of value investing. While I believe investors, especially smaller investors, should partake in more aggressive strategies, I do respect its high priest, Warren Buffett. Since its release late Friday last week, his annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A) shareholders has already been dissected here, here and here by those much smarter than me, but I offer my take on four important passages in his remarkable letter:

"You only learn who has been swimming naked when the tides goes out – and what we are witnessing at some of our largest financial institutions is an ugly sight."


Hmm, could he be referring to troubled companies like Washington Mutual (NYSE: WM), Citigroup (NYSE: C) Merrill Lynch (NYSE: MER), Ambac Financial (NYSE: ABK) and Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM)? Too late to do anything about it this cycle, but in the future we need greater industry transparency!


"The worst sort of business is one that grows rapidly, requires significant capital to engender growth, and then earns little or no money. Think airlines."

I agree 100%, just say no to investing in companies like Delta Airlines (NYSE: DAL), UAL Corp (NASDAQ: UAUA), AMR Corp (NYSE: AMR), Southwest Airlines (NYSE: LUV) and JetBlue Airways (NASDAQ: JBLU) in that cursed industry.

"At Berkshire, we will attempt to further increase our stream of direct and indirect foreign earnings."

Despite our country's incredible past success, it's important that investors now look elsewhere.

"But I'll make more mistakes in the future – you can bet on that."


Contrary to popular belief, mistakes are not the enemy – everybody makes them – the key is learning from them!

Timothy Sykes writes the blog timothysykes.com, is a former hedge fund manager, star of the TV show Wall Street Warriors and author of the book, An American Hedge Fund: How I Made $2 Million as a Stock Operator & Created a Hedge Fund

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Last updated: July 05, 2009: 01:15 PM

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