Thanks to a 50-for-1 stock split in January, Warren Buffett's Baby Berks were added to the S&P 500, and that will be reflected in many index ETFs starting Tuesday.
Now, aside from playing BRK.B via the common stock, investors will soon be able to gain direct exposure to Buffett's company via financial instruments like the iShares Dow Jones U.S. Financial Index Fund IYF-N.
With a nearly unmarked, multidecade record of beating the S&P 500 and a knack for picking winning companies, Buffett is viewed by many as the world's greatest investor. Due to his investing prowess, the Oracle of Omaha has amassed a following that includes not only retail investors, but market commentators and politicians. When Buffett makes a move, both Wall Street and Main Street listen.
Still, despite his many successes and droves of admirers, there are observers who are not overly impressed by Buffett's tenure. Last week, in an interview for an online magazine, Nassim Taleb, author of Black Swan, took a jab at Buffett's investing savvy, saying that there is not enough statistical evidence to say that Buffett's investing success can't be attributed to chance.
Offering up an example of a more statistically impressive investor, Taleb pointed to George Soros .
Taleb's apathetic attitude towards Buffett's track record is based on his belief that, in a large enough pool of random investors, there will always be a small number of people who outperform the masses. In this scenario Buffett happened to be this inevitable outlier. In his most recent controversial comment, Taleb insists that he does not feel that Buffett is unskilled, but that his success can largely be attributed to random luck.
Needless to say, Taleb's words had barely made it to the online forum before being pounced upon by a number of Buffett followers. Among them was Janet Tavakoli, president of Tavakoli Structured Finance and author of a book based on the famous investor.
In a scathing email to CNBC, she defended Buffett's investing record and offered up Taleb's own Empirica Kurtosis fund, which after a strong initial performance posted years of subpar returns and eventually closed, as a more appropriate example of dumb luck.
Interestingly, though no response has come from Buffett himself, there is a chance that he and Nassim Taleb may actually see eye to eye. When asked about his success in an interview with the BBC in late 2009, the Oracle of Omaha himself echoed the author's feelings, saying, "...if I was born in a different time or a different place, I'd be an animal's lunch. I'm lucky..."
Whether due to skill or luck, it's hard to deny Buffett's success. He may have benefited from a bull market in stocks, but his long track record of beating the S&P 500 shows that his ability to find undervalued companies also plays a role in his success.
Even though he failed to beat the S&P 500 in 2009, Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway BRK.A-N pocketed billions with his bets on both the struggling Goldman Sachs(GS Quote) and the small Chinese electric car company, BYD.
With the amount of heat that Taleb's statements about Buffett have generated, and with many investors now becoming shareholders via index ETFs and mutual funds, it would be interesting to see what readers at TheStreet.com have to say about the issue. Where do you stand?
