No. of Recommendations: 3
The credit crunch era investments were big and made a lot of money, so we can't fault that. But it was a missed opportunity to do more lasting investments. As a random example, Costco was trading under $50 for roughly 8-9 months.
I agree and second that with another example Starbucks, which was trading at a split adjusted price of below $4. A 20+ bagger since then. Not a tech stock or declining industry, very much in Buffett's zone of competency.
Another example is Apple selling below $3 split-adjusted in March 2009; a 50+ bagger since. It was 2 years after introduction of iphone and not everyone would have foreseen the awesome future growth. And Buffett viewed it as a tech stock whose future he couldn't predict. But he certainly made up for that later when he saw it as a great consumer products company.
One of his worst investments then was the twice out of Chapter 11 drywall maker USG. The ultimate cigar butt, and he didn't get even a puff out of it. He didn't heed Munger's advice to invest in wonderful companies at fair prices.
While he may have made decent money "saving" GS, GE and BAC, the opportunity cost of not investing in great companies at tremendous discounts was significant.
Not just Buffett, but several other well regarded value investors, viz. Leucadia missed out on the opportunities of the GFC and are no longer around.
