Real_Trouble
Posts: 471
Joined: 2/25/2008 Status: offline
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I've been sitting with cash waiting in a high yield savings account for approximately one year now, as I bailed out in the middle of '07 when I started to get nervous about the "E" side of P/E ratios not holding up. I've been dumping my money into a high yield savings account that, while it's bounced around with the fed action, has averaged about a ~4.1% EAR for that period. I'd like you to compare that to the S&P, Dow, Nasdaq, or virtually any emerging market. You'll find I'm way, way, way, way, way up on the market. (the remainder of my money is in bonds currently; I've made a few short plays and made out well, but currently I've closed out on those, and I skipped the commodities bubble because I didn't really understand what was driving it and I have a rule that if I don't understand something, I refuse to invest in it, so I neither rode that up nor down) And yes, Buffett does sit on a huge war chest. No, it's not literally in cash, but it's in highly liquid investments or easily extricated (as I'm referring to above), because it's much easier to do that than overpay for something not worthwhile. The float that is generated from his insurance / reinsurance investments is never 100% invested, and because the companies that fit the Berkshire profile tend to throw off a truckload of cash, he's usually got at least some on hand. Notice he just recently dipped his toe in with Goldman and GE, and did so at an exorbitant price for them (a good play), because when you have cash and others don't, you are the strong hand. I'm not advocating it as a permanent move, but sometimes it pays to know when everyone else is drunk and you need to leave the party for a while before coming back. To suggest there are no value investors out there who pay attention to this does violence to a long legacy of value investors tracing back to Graham, Dodd, and beyond. Now, I have nowhere near that amount of talent, but to say people don't do this is simply unadulterated bullshit, because there are plenty of people doing this.
< Message edited by Real_Trouble -- 10/24/2008 4:54:10 PM >
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