A good example of this is his $10.9 billion investment in IBM. While doing well initially, it’s now turned around and he has lost essentially all of the profit he had gained. Combine that with loses in Coca-Cola, which saw shares tumble in the last couple of days, and Buffett has seen his investments in these two companies fall by more than $2 billion over the past two days. Coca-Cola took a 14 percent hit in the third quarter. Buffet’s Berkshire-Hathaway owns nine percent of the company, but that is now valued at about six percent less than it was previously.
It doesn’t stop there. Buffet dumped a massive amount of his Tesco holdings despite his reputation for holding onto investments over the long term. The British retailer has admitted to overstating its profits in the first half of the year by about $400 million. Buffet is reported to have called his investment with the chain a “huge mistake” and that company admission only points to his correctness on that count.
And then there is Walmart, with shares at around “two percent cheaper than before the release of the latest guidance.” This decrease in overall value also represents a loss for Buffet, who has held stock in the company for at least nine years.
That makes his losses for the first two days of the week come to about $2 billion. While this would be a huge amount for most people, and it certainly in not an insignificant amount even to Warren Buffett, the truth is that it’s not a big enough loss to do any permanent damage to the oracle of Omaha’s wealth. Buffett has had a 50 year career of intense capitalism. His company – Berkshire Hathaway has grown into a giant conglomerate – making Buffett one of the wealthiest men on earth with a net worth of over $60 billion.
If you want a detailed blueprint on how Buffett built his wealth, consider getting a copy of The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life
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