How many fund managers went into the GVC (great virus crisis) with the portfolio they would have liked to be holding? Not many. And not even poor Warren Buffett.
In his downbeat online shareholder meeting last week, he told investors that he had spent much of March and April selling his huge stakes in the US’s four biggest airlines (United, American, Delta and Southwest) on the basis that “the world has changed” and holding them had been a “mistake”.
Unfortunately, it has not been the only mistake the world’s one-time greatest investor has made recently. Thanks to holding much of Berkshire Hathaway’s portfolio in out-of-fashion value stocks in an age of growth obsession, its shares have underperformed for a decade.