Join Warren Buffett and sit on your hands

Warren Buffett is arguably the world’s greatest investor. But now even he can’t find anything to buy. Maybe you should hang fire too, says Matthew Lynn.

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You could lose your shorts in this market
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For half a century, Warren Buffett has been arguably the world's greatest investor, and has made himself one of the planet's richest men. He bought into PetroChina as China was industrialising fast, making a 720% profit in five years. His stake in Freddie Mac, the American mortgage giant, netted a 1,500% gain over 13 years. Overall, his Berkshire Hathaway a strange hybrid between an investment trust and an industrial and financial conglomerate has made average annual compound returns of 22% over an epic 49 years, earning anyone who invested at the beginning a returns of 1,750,000% over that period.

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Matthew Lynn

Matthew Lynn is a columnist for Bloomberg, and writes weekly commentary syndicated in papers such as the Daily Telegraph, Die Welt, the Sydney Morning Herald, the South China Morning Post and the Miami Herald. He is also an associate editor of Spectator Business, and a regular contributor to The Spectator. Before that, he worked for the business section of the Sunday Times for ten years. 

He has written books on finance and financial topics, including Bust: Greece, The Euro and The Sovereign Debt Crisis and The Long Depression: The Slump of 2008 to 2031. Matthew is also the author of the Death Force series of military thrillers and the founder of Lume Books, an independent publisher.