My regular Saturday musings, plus a roundup of interesting blog posts and money-related articles.
Curiously, we saw two very different market anniversaries this week:
I can remember where I was both times.
You don’t need to own Berkshire Hathaway stock to benefit from the investing wisdom of the world’s richest man.
His annual letter to Berkshire shareholders explains just how to invest like Warren Buffett. (It also includes more jokes than the average CEO manages in a year!)
Here’s five highlights from Buffett’s latest letter to get you started.
One sign of a bear market bottom is said to be that cash is king.
Such times may be a good opportunity to buy shares for the long-term.
In contrast, in bull markets cash is trash.
At such times, the authorities have usually raised interest rates to try to dampen the boom. Yet everyone is greedy, sending stocks into bubble territory. You’ll even hear the phrase ‘cash is trash’ being used in newspapers and on TV.
Every Saturday! Weekend thoughts, and money and investing articles from around the web.
The UK Government stands to raise £1.5 billion from the one-off banker’s bonus tax. The Treasury only counted on getting £500 million.
If you recall, this bank tax was meant to persuade the banks to build up their capital reserves by retaining 2009’s windfall profits (which at investment banks were gained trading the broken markets and Government special measures that the banks themselves caused).
Policymakers – who work partly out of a sense of civic good – underestimated bankers, who are driven entirely by money. Bankers paid the bonuses anyway. It’s shareholders who’ve lost out.
Time for a new approach: Hiring Chinese bankers.
