[WebFocus]

[Red Badger]

Alpha? as in brain waves?.................

[sinanju]

This sounds totally new-agey and suspicious.

All they say here is “Alpha(skill)” wouldn’t return on investment be better stated more conventionally?

[Alberta's Child]

Stories like this remind of all that nonsense about those "Beardstown Ladies" a while back. Turns out they weren't any more astute at making investment decisions that a child.

I've long suspected that Warren Buffett has made a lot of prudent investment decisions in the past, and that right now he's kind of living off a reputation that was earned years ago.

He's not a young man anymore, and I'm not sure anyone could be expected to keep up a winning track record for a very long time.

[Wuli]

Well, maybe he did, or maybe he didn’t provide much “alpha” over the last decade; but, a pertinent question potential investors look at is, O.K. what was Buffets “alpha” against some broad measure like the S&P or the Dow, etc. (seems to me they are no further ahead than they were a decade ago).

For many, many elderly people, smart elderly people, they are no longer seeking to make a “killing” in “the markets”; they just want to do a decent job of preserving what they have, minus what they need to spend from what they have. I think they are a big part of Berkshire Hathaway (BH) investors and I imagine their steady dividend checks and stable capital positions has them satisfied. They may not have vastly improved their positions in the last decade, but neither have they lost their shirts or their nest-eggs in BH.