Don't follow Warren Buffett

If Warren Buffet is such a great investor, why not save yourself the time and hassle of stock research, and just copy him? Tim Bennett explains why repeating his performance is unlikely to work.

Warren Buffett is "the greatest investor of all time", reckons the BBC's Evan Davis and countless other admirers. So why not save yourself the time and hassle of stock research, and just copy the master? After all, if you'd replicated his trades between 1976 and 2006, you would have beaten the S&P 500 index by 10.75% per year, reckons the London School of Economics.

But before you rush off to check out Buffett's latest trades, be warned the copycat trade is unlikely to work so well over the next 30 years. Repeating many of Buffett's big moves these days is either tough or impossible. Take his latest deal (at $34bn, his biggest yet) to buy railroad operator Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp. Buffett is buying the entire company, so you can't copy him this time.

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Tim graduated with a history degree from Cambridge University in 1989 and, after a year of travelling, joined the financial services firm Ernst and Young in 1990, qualifying as a chartered accountant in 1994.

He then moved into financial markets training, designing and running a variety of courses at graduate level and beyond for a range of organisations including the Securities and Investment Institute and UBS. He joined MoneyWeek in 2007.