Warren Buffett, hater of pet rocks, buys his first gold mine

Legendary investor Warren Buffett has always displayed contempt for gold as an investment. So why has he bought a gold mine? John Stepek looks at what we can learn from his purchase.

Warren Buffett © JOHANNES EISELE/AFP via Getty Images
Warren Buffett: no slave to ideology
(Image credit: © JOHANNES EISELE/AFP via Getty Images)

If there’s one thing that everyone knows about Warren Buffett, it’s that he's not a fan of gold.

The man commonly described as the world’s greatest investor (unless you’re a member of the “Robinhood” generation, who are yet to be taught the value of fundamentals by Mr Market in his inimitably brutal manner – don’t worry kids, it’s coming), has frequently pointed out that gold, an inert metal, is no match for solid, honest, productive companies made in the good ole US of A.

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John Stepek

John Stepek is a senior reporter at Bloomberg News and a former editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He graduated from Strathclyde University with a degree in psychology in 1996 and has always been fascinated by the gap between the way the market works in theory and the way it works in practice, and by how our deep-rooted instincts work against our best interests as investors.

He started out in journalism by writing articles about the specific business challenges facing family firms. In 2003, he took a job on the finance desk of Teletext, where he spent two years covering the markets and breaking financial news.

His work has been published in Families in Business, Shares magazine, Spear's Magazine, The Sunday Times, and The Spectator among others. He has also appeared as an expert commentator on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, BBC Radio Scotland, Newsnight, Daily Politics and Bloomberg. His first book, on contrarian investing, The Sceptical Investor, was released in March 2019. You can follow John on Twitter at @john_stepek.