October 17, 2008

Warren's Very Public Contrarian Call

Here's a tough one for the contrarians out there. What do you make of Warren Buffet's article in today's New York Times? 

One of the most successful investors of all time is right there in a major newspaper essentially telling the investing masses: "Fear not. Buy stocks." Is the fact that it's such a visible call a contrarian indicator and therefore a bearish signal? But what of Mr. Buffet's historical record of correct bullish calls? Does one cancel the other out? Hmmm, like I said, that's a tough one to crack. Hindsight seems to be the only way to go here: we'll know one day if his call was totally wrong (i.e. we still have a long painful descent ahead of us), just early (we still have a little bit to go on the downside time-wise and level-wise but we strongly rebound from there) or prescient (this month marks the bottom of this bear market).

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't take Mr. Buffet's call all that seriously. I got cautiously bullish when my mother insisted she sell out of her IRA and move her money into CD's.

Isam Laroui said...

Michael,
that's contrarian investing in its purest form!