Even prominent efficient-market theorists attributed Buffett’s returns to chance
Evidence
Was the practical investment success of some fundamentals analysts, notably of the enormously successful Warren Buffett, evidence against efficient-market theory? Buffett’s investment record certainly commanded respect: Buffett told his biographer, Roger Lowenstein, that Paul Samuelson had hedged his intellectual bets by making a large investment in Buffett’s holding company, Berkshire Hathaway (Lowenstein 1995, p. 311). In 1984, Columbia University celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the original publication of Graham and Dodd’s Security Analysis by staging a debate between Buffet and the efficientmarket theorist Michael Jensen. Jensen argued that such success as had been enjoyed by followers of Graham and Dodd, such as Buffet, might be sheer chance: “If I survey a field of untalented analysts all of whom are doing nothing but flipping coins, I expect to see some who have tossed two heads in a row and even some who have tossed ten heads in a row” (quoted on p. 317 of Lowenstein 1995) Replying to Jensen, Buffet did not dismiss the latter’s unflattering analogy out of hand. — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera, 343
Categorization
- SHARE: The detail that Samuelson hedged his intellectual bets by investing heavily in Berkshire Hathaway is precisely the kind of irony a finance-scholar friend would love.
- XREF: connects to: Even efficient-market theorists privately acknowledged mispricings existed. — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial…, 1109
Broader Connections
- Even efficient-market theorists privately acknowledged mispricings existed.
#complicates(0.80) — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera, 1109