2008 will be gone in a few weeks, and we cannot wait. The market is down by 40% and counting. We have seen our gurus fall. Still we like to invite our users to nominate the investment Guru of Year 2008.
All of us learned our lessons this year, hopefully we still remember the lessons a few years later. As Seth Klarman said, it is important to have the right process in investment decision making, it is also important that investors do not change their process because of short underperformances.
What a year that was! We have seen that Berkshire Hathaway lost 50% of its market value. We have seen that Ken Heebner had a bad bet on commodity stocks and given back all of his last year's 80% gain and more. We have seen Bruce Berkowitz held well until September, but suddenly lost 40%afterwards. We have seen Robert Rodriguez made the right prediction of financial crisis but invested in a dying company Circuit City and lost all the money invested there. We have also seen that Marty Whitman learned some new lessons at the age of 85. We have seen that long term winner Arnold Van Den Berg lost big on retailers, he said that the bottom for S&P500 was 1200 back in May. All of us would be much happier if that is the case.
No everything is negative, though. John Hussman smelled both valuation and market risks and hedged his portfolios. Prem Watsa even profited from the financial crisis, his company Fairfax holdings is stronger than ever. We also have young gurus Bill Ackman and David Einhorn who saw the cracks in financial companies and profited from shorting them…
There are a lot for us to learn…
Still, most of our gurus have excellent long term track records, outperforming the benchmarks by wide margins over the past 10 years. The market meltdown presents them opportunities that they have not seen in decades. There are just too many bargains.
In 2005, David Dreman was named GuruFocus Investment Guru of the Year through a poll. We nominated 4 Gurus first and ask our readers to vote. In 2006, Warren Buffett was named the investment Guru of the Year by our readers. In 2007, Ken Heebner was named Investment Guru of the Year.
Similar to prior years, this year we give all the rights of nomination to our readers. Please nominate the Guru you think should be Investment Guru of 2008, write his or her name in the comment field of this thread, give short reasons if you like to. The deadline for the nomination is Dec. 15. Thank you all in advance for your participation.
Please note that Warren Buffett was named the investment Guru of 2006. Although he deserves to be Guru of the year every year, please nominate a different Guru for 2008.
All of us learned our lessons this year, hopefully we still remember the lessons a few years later. As Seth Klarman said, it is important to have the right process in investment decision making, it is also important that investors do not change their process because of short underperformances.
What a year that was! We have seen that Berkshire Hathaway lost 50% of its market value. We have seen that Ken Heebner had a bad bet on commodity stocks and given back all of his last year's 80% gain and more. We have seen Bruce Berkowitz held well until September, but suddenly lost 40%afterwards. We have seen Robert Rodriguez made the right prediction of financial crisis but invested in a dying company Circuit City and lost all the money invested there. We have also seen that Marty Whitman learned some new lessons at the age of 85. We have seen that long term winner Arnold Van Den Berg lost big on retailers, he said that the bottom for S&P500 was 1200 back in May. All of us would be much happier if that is the case.
No everything is negative, though. John Hussman smelled both valuation and market risks and hedged his portfolios. Prem Watsa even profited from the financial crisis, his company Fairfax holdings is stronger than ever. We also have young gurus Bill Ackman and David Einhorn who saw the cracks in financial companies and profited from shorting them…
There are a lot for us to learn…
Still, most of our gurus have excellent long term track records, outperforming the benchmarks by wide margins over the past 10 years. The market meltdown presents them opportunities that they have not seen in decades. There are just too many bargains.
In 2005, David Dreman was named GuruFocus Investment Guru of the Year through a poll. We nominated 4 Gurus first and ask our readers to vote. In 2006, Warren Buffett was named the investment Guru of the Year by our readers. In 2007, Ken Heebner was named Investment Guru of the Year.
Similar to prior years, this year we give all the rights of nomination to our readers. Please nominate the Guru you think should be Investment Guru of 2008, write his or her name in the comment field of this thread, give short reasons if you like to. The deadline for the nomination is Dec. 15. Thank you all in advance for your participation.
Please note that Warren Buffett was named the investment Guru of 2006. Although he deserves to be Guru of the year every year, please nominate a different Guru for 2008.
