Looking back at my buy/sell spreadsheet...

It's counterintuitive that your worst return is from a purchase that has beat the market, and the best return is from a purchase that hasn't.

But if I think about it a bit more, that makes sense: the broad US market rebounds from lows more than something as boring as Berkshire, which probably didn't drop as much in the first place. One could even make the risky generalization that when the broad market really tanks, it's reasonably likely to be the better returning pick for a while.

This is probably not unrelated to the observation that during the first few weeks an months after a MAJOR market bottom, the stuff that does the very best is the absolute worst companies, the stuff that crashed the most and you'd usually want to short.

Jim