危机中，巴菲特妙手频出

世界上佩服巴菲特的人实在是太多了。我都不敢说自己也是巴菲特的崇拜者（实际上似乎也不是），连说是他的欣赏着都得看场合，你看我这胆子小的。

不过，有那厶一阵，我还是忍不住，写了一本书，《造就股神巴菲特的价值投资∶股市投资制　之道》（崇文书局，2009年版），名字取得很糟糕，而且居然还偷偷出版了。说是偷偷，因为造成的影响并不是很大，结果和“偷偷”也没有什厶差别。不过，出版社说，他们还是小赚了一点，于是乎，我也没有罪恶感。再者，读了的人，看来也还是喜欢的比较多。

说实在的，那本书更　合在美国投资的人读，中国的股市我还是看不懂。出版社应该将那本书带到国外去开书展才对。

只不过，我是写给一般的读者看的，那些“大家”之流，看后可能会说“很幼稚”。最近开博，时不时看到人们用这样的字眼来描述我的文章。我还是不知道，这到底是在夸奖我呢，还是在贬低自己，或者是在卖弄自己“看破红尘”的老到。

无论如何，巴菲特老头还是在人们一次次的讥笑之中，继续前行，继续让人跌破眼镜。只是太好算了那些开眼镜店的老板了。

下面是一篇英文博客文章，分析了巴菲特在这次金融危机中的“老辣”手段。觉得不错，分享给大家。给你们英文原文，是因为自己的英文水平实在是不怎厶地，不敢随便翻译东西的。

记得在《奥巴马智取白宫》，也就是那本马上要去法兰克福参展的书（美国还有卖的呢，这是我的第二本在美国能够买到的书，第一本是《奥巴马大传》），出版之后，由于里面涉及到大量的奥巴马的演讲内容，于是乎，就有读者送电邮来破口大骂，说我对奥巴马演讲的翻译水平实在是太低，让他在老师那里挨了骂。

这位可能是效率太高了一点，也没有仔细看看我的声明∶我只是意译，而且，很多地方我还改成了中国式的语言表述。同时，我也删掉了很多奥巴马自己“啰里啰嗦”的内容。如果你以它为蓝本，想去骗你的老师，以为已经出版的著作的翻译自然就是准确的，那厶你当然就会吃亏了。

不过，骂我似乎也没有道理。自认吧，谁让你那厶懒惰。大致读读就应该知道的，那不是忠实的翻译文本，我对奥巴马没有那厶的“忠实”，也不觉得有那个必要。如果你还能够大概读得懂英文的话，就应该知道的。

啰嗦半天，回到正题，下面是那篇关于巴菲特投资手段的文章。

Is this Buffett's best run ever?

With sly buys and shrewd loans, the Oracle of Omaha made billions in the credit crunch. You can learn from his moves -- and buy a handful of stocks with him.

By Michael Brush

MSN Money （2009/11/5）

If you listened to the pundits over the past two or three years, you might have thought investing legend Warren Buffett had lost his chops.

But the last laugh belongs to the man from Omaha. In fact, as one of his key deputies, David Sokol, said on CNBC last week, the past 18 months may have been his best ever.

And they've shown us a different side of the famed buy-and-hold, value-investing genius -- a side that was aggressive and even predatory in taking advantage of the market crisis.

While everyday investors can't copy his most successful recent moves, we can all learn from how he's handled the crisis -- and make some money buying his stock or some of the ones he's been buying.

Well, he seemed out of sync

The criticism went this way: Buffett's big problem was that he had stayed in cash too long while other investors enjoyed go-go returns during the real-estate bubble. Then, with the market down and the bubble deflating, Buffett got bullish too early. He proclaimed his bullishness in an October 2008 New York Times commentary, right before the markets took another deep dive.

By the start of 2009, it was open season on Buffett. Investing pundits such as Douglas Kass publicly declared that Buffett's "salad days" were over and that the value of Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A, news, msgs) would "steadily suffer" with such a has-been at the helm.

Since then, Berkshire Hathaway's stock has advanced about 15%, though it's still lower than when the crunch began.

But more importantly, during the dark days of the credit crunch , Buffett was one of the few investors around with cash, because his discipline had kept him away from disaster.

He used his cash to "plant the investment seeds for very attractive long-term returns," says Justin Fuller, a partner at Midway Capital Research & Management who writes regular commentary on Buffett at Buffettologist.com.

Indeed, as the smoke clears, a fresh image of the investing genius of the Oracle of Omaha is emerging in a series of deals that will benefit anyone who buys Berkshire Hathaway stock now.

His most recent headline-grabbing deployment of some of his vast cash hoard played out earlier this week when Buffett bought the rest of Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNI, news, msgs) -- the 77.4% of the railroad he did not already own. This move served as an "all in" bet on the future of America, Buffett said in announcing the deal.

The Bank of Buffett

His best move during the credit crisis? A huge loan to troubled Goldman Sachs (GS, news, msgs), arranged in late summer 2008, when few investors would touch anything at all in the financial sector.

Highlights of the deal:

• Buffett locked in a 10% annual return on $5 billion he lent the Wall Street bank. Buffett gave Goldman the money in exchange for preferred stock, a hybrid of stock and bonded debt. In contrast, most investors will probably have to settle for ridiculously small returns on cash savings because the Federal Reserve is keeping interest rates near zero.
• Buffett negotiated an option to buy 43.5 million shares of Goldman at $115 per share anytime he wants during the next four years. Buffett is already up $2.4 billion on that part of the deal, with Goldman stock recently selling for $170.

Not bad for a guy who was all washed up.

Buffett negotiated no fewer than five major deals like that when the frozen credit markets temporarily turned him into the de facto lender of last resort, says Stephen Shueh, a partner at Roundview Capital , a value-oriented investing company based in Princeton, N.J.

Besides assisting Goldman Sachs, Buffett lent to strapped General Electric (GE, news, msgs) and Swiss Re (SWCEY, news, msgs), an insurance company. His funding helped British candy company Mars buy Wm. Wrigley Jr. and helped Dow Chemical (DOW, news, msgs) purchase Rohm and Haas. He also made smaller but equally favorable loans to Harley-Davidson (HOG, news, msgs) and Tiffany (TIF, news, msgs).

Despite Buffett's aw-shucks, regular-guy image, he used his position of strength to exact what looked like predatory terms when borrowers had few options.

Merely accepting opportunity?

Buffett aficionados caution against calling him predatory, of course. They say Buffett was only doing what he does best: exercising discipline to avoid blowing money on frivolous bets so he'll have plenty of cash around when others need it the most -- and will pay him the most to borrow it.

"My sense is he's not out running around looking for people in trouble and saying, 'Call me if you want to get burned,'" says Larry Coats, Jr., a co-manager of the Oak Value Fund (OAKVX). "He's often said he sits by the phone waiting for it to ring. Typically, people tell him what they want to do, and he says yes or no."

Coats describes Buffett as opportunistic rather than predatory.

­Though Buffett's easiest profits will come from these loan deals -- often with options attached to buy the stock of the borrower at favorable prices -- Buffett also made some particularly savvy moves in stocks.

During the first quarter of this year, when so many investors were dumping stocks, Buffett added to positions in Wells Fargo (WFC, news, msgs), US Bancorp (USB, news, msgs), Burlington Northern, Union Pacific (UNP, news, msgs) and Nalco (NLC, news, msgs), a water-treatment company.

We don't know exactly the prices Buffett paid, but all of those stocks have done very well since his purchases. The two banks have tripled from their lows in March. Nalco has doubled. And the two railroads were up 50% to 60% before Buffett moved them even higher by purchasing Burlington Northern.

Buying stocks like Buffett

That's great, you say. Buffett did well, which is hardly a surprise. But what can I, as an individual investor , get out of all of this?

There's plenty to be gained in terms of both profit and investing wisdom.

We regular investors can't imitate Buffett's sophisticated lending deals, but we can profit from his moves.

Just counting the bigger deals, Buffett lent more than $18 billion during the credit crunch , on very favorable terms to Berkshire Hathaway. The return will be enough to move the profit needle significantly at Berkshire, Roundview Capital's Shueh says.

That's why Shueh believes Berkshire is still a buy despite the big move off its March lows. "Berkshire Hathaway continues to trade at the low end of its valuation range," he says.

(Note to would-be buyers: While the main Berkshire stock, BRK.A, at around $100,000 a share, is out of reach for most investors, the B-class shares, BRK.B, can be snagged for a mere $3,300 and change each.)

You can also follow Berkshire Hathaway's moves in two stocks -- Johnson & Johnson (JNJ, news, msgs) and Becton, Dickinson (BDX, news, msgs) -- by purchasing right now, because they haven't advanced much from where Berkshire recently bought. (Below, I list four other Buffett stocks that look like buys because they still look reasonably cheap.)

As for investing wisdom, Buffett comes out of the credit crunch a winner because he followed two of his basic rules:

• Instead of getting caught up in the real-estate-driven bubble and paying too much for stocks, he waited for the great deals that became available as the markets fell apart. This was easy for him to do because his investing style is based on "lethargy bordering on sloth."
• He also behaved like a true contrarian during the credit crunch. He got greedy -- making deals and buying stocks hand over fist -- while others were fearful, to echo one of his most famous axioms.

Buffett stocks to buy now

I'll guide you to two other groups of Buffett stocks to buy now. In the first category, I include Berkshire-held stocks that presumably still trade at levels where Buffett presumably bought. (I had Burlington Northern on this list until it was purchased earlier this week by Buffett, driving the stock up from around $76 a share to more than $97.)

I say "presumably" because, unless Buffett tells us, we don't really know what he paid for stocks in the Berkshire Hathaway portfolio. He does have to report changes in the portfolio in 13F filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission each quarter. (Reading those closely followed reports is a good way to track Buffett holdings, by the way.)

There's some guesswork involved, and the cleanest way to do this is to take the midpoint of where the stock traded during the quarter in which he reports purchases.

According to the Web site GuruFocus.com, Johnson & Johnson and Becton, Dickinson still trade for less than 10% of the midpoint of their trading ranges in the second quarter, when Berkshire Hathaway bought each stock.

Johnson & Johnson is diversified in medical devices, medicine and pharmaceuticals, and Buffett has liked it for years. Because of its strong brand name, numerous patents and productive research pipeline, Johnson & Johnson has the kind of "economic moat," or protection against competitors, that piques Buffett's interest. It also has two other favorite Buffett qualities: solid financial strength and prodigious cash flow.

Becton, Dickinson sells instruments used in surgery, including needles, syringes and scalpels. Its sheer size and innovation (most recently it rolled out a line of needles that are safer because they help prevent accidental needle pricks) help keep competitors off its turf. Becton, Dickinson also produces a lot of free cash flow, which is used in part to support a 1.9% annual dividend yield.

The second group of Berkshire Hathaway-held stocks I'd suggest buying right now includes those with five-star ratings at Morningstar. Like Buffett, Morningstar has a strict value discipline that guides investors to potentially good stocks by directing them away from stocks that look too pricey. Plus, five-star stocks must have several of the other qualities that Buffett likes, such as solid financial strength and a reasonably strong economic moat.

Besides Johnson & Johnson and Becton, Dickinson, the only Berkshire Hathaway stocks with five-star Morningstar ratings right now are cable company Comcast (CMCSA, news, msgs), home-supply chain Lowe's (LOW, news, msgs) and consumer-products company Procter & Gamble (PG, news, msgs).

One more: a 'Buffett' IPO

Intriguingly, Buffett did not sell shares of Verisk Analytics (VRSK, news, msgs) when the company reached the market in an initial public offering earlier this month. Verisk Analytics is an insurance-industry consultant that helps insurers meet complex state legal and regulatory requirements, and write policies.

Before going public, Verisk was owned primarily by property and casualty insurers like Berkshire Hathaway, American Insurance Group (AIG, news, msgs) and Hartford Financial Services (HIG, news, msgs). The Verisk IPO was launched mainly to give strapped insurance companies a chance to raise funds by liquidating positions.

But Berkshire Hathaway didn't sell its stake in Verisk -- a vote of confidence in the company, Morningstar analyst Justin Perucki believes.

This might seem like a roundabout way to find a Buffett stock. But with a sly investor like Buffett, you have to resort to some sly techniques.