Sometimes you read an article about stocks, and you just want to scream. When I was in Italy this past week for vacation, I read a piece that was pushed to me about individual stock investing — and, as usual, it trashed you, the retail investor; it “defrocked” me by noting that individuals are buying stocks in record numbers, up to 20% from 10% of all volume in the last couple of decades. Notice the word “buying.” It’s pointed; it says you “buy,” not invest, because “buying” is meant to disparage you. A professional, or even better, an S & P 500 buyer, is an informed investor. A person who owns just a handful of stocks, even picked side by side with an index investor, is a speculator — and a speculator, per se, is a first-class idiot Where does this stem from? First and foremost, Warren Buffett , who, while obviously the best investor of our lifetime, remains a conundrum, because an individual investor would have far outperformed an S & P 500 fund by buying Berkshire Hathaway ‘s stock, even as it’s been stuck in a tax rut on some of his positions, like Coca-Cola and American Express , where he would have incurred huge capital gains if he had sold them. While I like both companies, neither is considered a standout: American Express is regarded as a credit-derived stock, not a consistent fee-based company with tremendous benefits that is highly attractive to Gen Z consumers — the point generation. Coca-Cola is part of the hated food and beverage cohort, although admittedly the best of the lot. The last few quarters have been beating the consensus, yet I bet most of you are waiting for two shoes — GLP-1 impact and the health movement — to drop. I don’t blame you. Look at what happened to the more snack-oriented competitor, PepsiCo , which may qualify for the collapse of the year, rivaling McDonald’s for the blue-chip crown, as in the one worn by the (lamented) Burger King. But let’s dig deeper into the stock portfolio Buffett has amassed at Berkshire, where he turned the chairmanship over to his son, Howard Buffett, earlier this month and the CEO role in January to Greg Abel, former head of the company’s non-insurance businesses. Where did Buffett’s outperformance really come from in the last decade? You know as well as I do: Apple , a concentrated Berkshire position in Apple. It’s a stock I have championed for decades and dubbed an “own it, don’t trade it” position in the CNBC Investing Club portfolio . The Apple position arrived at Berkshire in 2016, but Buffett has said it was a trip with his great-grandchildren to a Berkshire-owned Dairy Queen location, where he saw lots of kids glued to their iPhones, which really solidified his belief in the device not just as a great piece of technology but as a consumer product and subsequently led to Berkshire acquiring a massive stake. So, let’s just go there. The most cited reason why you can’t stray from the S & P 500 index fund? The advice of the Great One, the Oracle of Omaha, who just…
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