Most people can't spend 99 days in analysis and then do a trade on the 100th day when all the stars align. Bingo.
I think it a systemic personal fault. One may wait 99 days and trade on the 100th for the right set up. Or it could be a matter of forcing the trade if you are a short term trader. Perhaps trade failure results in lack of patience.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/26337298/site/14081545/ Transcript of interview with Mr. Buffett. === Interesting comment relating to Fannie Mae: QUICK: If you imagine where things will go with Fannie and Freddie, and you think about the regulators, where were the regulators for what was happening, and can something like this be prevented from happening again? BUFFETT: Well, it's really an incredible case study in regulation because something called OFHEO was set up in 1992 by Congress, and the sole job of OFHEO was to watch over Fannie and Freddie, someone to watch over them. And they were there to evaluate the soundness and the accounting and all of that. Two companies were all they had to regulate. OFHEO has over 200 employees now. They have a budget now that's $65 million a year, and all they have to do is look at two companies. I mean, you know, I look at more than two companies. QUICK: Mm-hmm. BUFFETT: And they sat there, made reports to the Congress, you can get them on the Internet, every year. And, in fact, they reported to Sarbanes and Oxley every year. And they went--wrote 100 page reports, and they said, `We've looked at these people and their standards are fine and their directors are fine and everything was fine.' And then all of a sudden you had two of the greatest accounting misstatements in history. You had all kinds of management malfeasance, and it all came out. And, of course, the classic thing was that after it all came out, OFHEO wrote a 350--340 page report examining what went wrong, and they blamed the management, they blamed the directors, they blamed the audit committee. They didn't have a word in there about themselves, and they're the ones that 200 people were going to work every day with just two companies to think about. It just shows the problems of regulation.
I do not understand why Warren Buffett bought NRG. http://finance.google.com/finance?q=nrg reports NRG revenue, net income and equity all decreasing. NRG is a electricity company. There are lots of electricity companies. Why this one?
I think I read somewhere that he spent 20+ years following KO before it became attractive enough for him. THAT'S patience.
Don't know but would like to add, utilties have a moat, it would seem logical for his style, generally speaking, that we can't import electricity. Seems we have some foreign interest in our utlitites, maybe something in the works down the road? Nimo got bought out by National Grid, didn't take long before they got fined for poor service. My memory is shot but, there were four areas of interest I considered WEB was interested in re U.S. Railroads, utilities, the other two I can't recall but it seems he is eye balling the basics.
I seem to recall there was some impending change regarding regulation which perhaps makes his interest prescient.
People never talk about the origin of becoming this or that but rather just talk about the pro's and con's of doing something without ever looking at the reality of how something comes to be. How did Warren Buffet, a very talented and successful fundamental investor come to be? All you have to do in order to figure this out is read his biography. By the time he was 30 he had seven business partnerships. That says he is an extremely successful business man. To be an extremely successful business man means knowing the in's and out's of business extrodinarily well. Therefore as a fundamental investor he could see the actual strength of businesses with amazing insight and vision. Being a successful fundamental investor is much more then knowing how to judge statistics of a company. If you haven't run or worked in a business and experienced how it functions then I say how in the hell do you actually make an opinion about fundamental investing. Business statistics tell you how a company has been doing but besides that you have no actual vision and taste of the business without becoming a business man.