Follow the money. No better way to make money over the long term than follow the money. Daytrading, something different, but long term follow the money, and who cares why, just pay attention to the money flow.
this is a very uneducated post, who cares if buffett sold $3B in consumer stocks if he bought a $26B rail road, invested $5B in bofa, opened a $10B position in IBM, and just bought heinz, a consumer stock. this post was a very one sided look at buffett's activity, if you look at the whole picture he is obviously very bullish on america and putting money where his mouth is.
right, im not saying buffett's activity is an indicator nor am i saying you should follow him, but OP posted an article of buffett selling puny holdings in jnj, pg, and some other stock and seemed to think that meant billionaires were selling. i was just saying looking at those small sales is a very bad indicator of what buffett actually believes. i am not saying since buffett is bullish, so should we
He had taken advantage of certain market dynamics and his position (AAA credit) to effectively sell re-insurance. He got great levels. Unfortunately everything is a gamble and this didn't payoff. He wasn't selling the puts because he was premium happy and thought the market wouldn't go down.