Buying like Buffett beats investments in Berkshire

Warren Buffett followers who invest like the billionaire instead of with him would have earned higher returns since the bear market bottomed more than three months ago.

Post-Lehman world will mean W-shaped recoveries

You can see it in the body language when speaking with Japanese officials. It’s a kind of physical resignation that, well, here we go again: deflation, negligible growth, political maneuvering.

An adviser (mine) is charged with fraud

About two months ago, I wrote a column about how Matthew Weitzman, our family's financial planner, was under investigation for reportedly siphoning money from clients' accounts.

Hedge funds worried Obama moves could backfire

US government efforts to revive a sluggish economy have cheered markets since March, but some of the most successful investors around worry these moves may only make the bad times linger.

He doesn’t let money managers off the hook

Every once in a while, if only for sanity's sake, it is wise to leave our bankrupt era behind and seek out a bit of wisdom from a moral authority.

Buffett’s Berkshire posts a rare loss

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc posted its worst loss in at least two decades as the billionaire chairman worked to recover from a “major mistake” of buying ConocoPhillips shares with oil prices near their peak.

Buffett refocuses attention

Warren Buffet, with his partner Charles Munger, have defined investment philosophies over the years. Now, things are rather sombre. He will have to refocus on some investment strategies

New worries for next tier of banks

Absent fresh details on how the nation’s 19 largest banks fared in a new government test of their health, analysts are turning the spotlight on a handful of major regional banks that they reckon may be the next weak links in the financial industry.

S&P 500 may jump 70% on valuation: Ken Fisher

The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index is in the middle of a rally that will drive it as much as 70% above its March lows, billionaire Kenneth Fisher said.

Rupee pain means exporters gain as Indians beat China

Gokaldas Exports, India’s biggest garment exporter, says the rupee’s slide to a record low helped to win orders from rivals in China, where the yuan gained against the dollar in the past year.

Is greed overcoming fear in the stock market?

US stocks typically rebound six months before the economy, but investors worry that the current 25% rally since the market's March 9 low could be a red herring.

A pitched battle for turf between bears and bulls

Time to buy stocks. No, wait - time to sell them. The bulls and the bears never agree. But what is remarkable is that the rift between these two Wall Street camps seems to be widening.

World stuck with the dollar, more’s the pity

The dollar is, and will remain, the US's currency and its own and everyone else's problem. The idea of creating a global currency, as espoused by China earlier this week, is interesting, has a certain amount of merit and is simply not going to happen any time soon.

Geneva banks face ‘creative destruction’ in losing secrecy

Geneva’s private banks, money managers for the world's rich since the French Revolution, may see their numbers shrink after Switzerland agreed to loosen bank secrecy for foreign clients.

Naked short sales hint fraud in bringing down Lehman

The biggest bankruptcy in history might have been avoided if Wall Street had been prevented from practicing one of its darkest arts.

Madoff had accomplices: his victims

Standing in the security line Thursday morning, waiting to get into the federal courthouse in Manhattan, I started chatting with the man behind me. He looked to be in his early 60s, and though he was well dressed, he looked a little haggard.

Swiss suffer secrecy loss to sustain money management

Ever since UBS AG handed over the names of about 300 customers to the US on February 18, there’s been nothing but shuddering from Zurich’s Paradeplatz to Geneva’s quartier des banques.

Buffett assumes new role as lender of last resort

Warren Buffett is having a bad year or two. The numbers for profit and book value he will disclose tomorrow in the 2008 annual report for Berkshire Hathaway Inc, his conglomerate and investment vehicle, will lack the sparkle of yesteryear.

My children made me do it

My father didn’t leave me much when he died. Although he was at one time a fast-rising executive in a multinational company, a combination of corporate skullduggery and his own personal demons meant he had little in the bank when he died in 2001, a few days before his 70th birthday.

Investors to look at alternative investments in Obama regime

Three decades ago, engineer Peter Fraenkel created an underwater turbine to use river power to pump water in Sudan, where he worked for a charity.

Of boom, bust but maybe not the Black Death

As the crisis has deepened, we’ve had to search farther back in history for precedents, and with deflation at hand, much of the debate now centres on how similar the next while will be to the Great Depression.

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