Mark Twain was a literary giant — but a horrible investor. John Maynard Keynes was one of history’s greatest economists, but his genius for economics was less helpful to his own investment choices than his mental flexibility. Warren Buffett’s investment track record is almost without equal, but he once made a $6 billion mistake.
Q2 hedge fund letters, conference, scoops etc
On today's show, we speak with Michael Batnick, author of Big Mistakes: The Best Investors and Their Worst Investments, about the mistakes made by these famous investors and the lessons we should all learn from those mistakes.
Warren Buffett's Investment Track Record: When Oracles Err
Transcript
Hey everybody. I'm Stacey Vanek Smith and I'm Cardiff Garcia. Welcome to the indicator where every day we get a kind of shameful scandalous joy from watching the mistakes of famous people celebrities. We love it when people fail. Know what we do here is we tell short stories about the economy. In today's short story is about the biggest investment mistakes ever made by three famous people.
We took three examples from a new book called big mistakes. It is by Michael Batt. He is research director at Rynhold wealth management.
Instead of writing a book about the best ideas from the best investor which sounds kind of boring Yeah. Michael wrote a book about the worst ideas from the best investors.
What did you want to get across. Well I think that investing is really hard for everybody whether you're managing a hundred billion dollar hedge fund or you trust your 401k. It's really hard for all of us and we all face different challenges whatever you're doing in your methodology or buying hold or trade or whatever it is it's difficult and I think for some how people still underestimate how difficult it is.
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