SmartMoney.com associate editor Jack Hough says now is a good time to pick up Buffett-favored stocks on the cheap.
“I’m more interested in exploiting Buffett than defending him,” Hough writes. “The shortest path to being a great investor is to copy one.”
He recommends against Berkshire shares because of its concentration in financial service companies. “Investors who prefer to avoid that can simply cherry-pick from its holdings, which are reported quarterly.”
Hough chose five stocks that “Buffett says he still likes but that Berkshire has trimmed its stake in to make room for new purchases.”
The selections: Burlington Northern; Eaton, an industrial products company; ConcoPhillips; Kraft; and NRG Energy, a utility.
Some investors are saying Warren Buffett has lost his touch. Shares in his company, Berkshire Hathaway, dropped 31 percent over the past year.
Others take him to task for being early in urging Americans to buy stocks in an Oct. 16 opinion piece in The New York Times.
Never mind that Buffett wrote in that column, “I haven’t the faintest idea as to whether stocks will be higher or lower a month — or a year — from now.
Others criticize Buffett for being a hypocrite on derivatives, writing contracts on them after telling his shareholders they are “financial weapons of mass destruction.”
Some investors still like Berkshire as a whole.
“We think it's a great company. Fortress-like balance sheet in very treacherous economic environments,” Whitney Tilson of T2 Partners tells Nightly Business Report.
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