Warren Buffett News: Buffett renews argument for millionaire’s tax

BERKSHIRE HATHAWAYWarren Buffett Urges Congress to Impose a Minimum Tax on the Wealthy (NationalJournal)
Billionaire Warren Buffett urged Congress in a New York Times op-ed on Monday to lose no time in enacting a minimum tax on high-income Americans. Buffett, who has repeatedly called for higher taxes on the very wealthiest Americans and whose name has been linked to President Obama’s proposal to tax millionaires, suggested that Congress move “right now” to impose a tax of 30 percent on taxable incomes of between $1 million and $10 million, and 35 percent on amounts larger than that.

Buffett How Has 19.4% of Portfolio in Wells Fargo: Why it’s the Better Bank Stock (Forbes)
In Buffett-land, the big headline this past week was the revelation that Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B) established a new position in the stock of John Deere (DE). Warren Buffett’s conglomerate reported it picked up nearly 4 million shares of Deere in the third quarter. …If you’re looking for what the Oracle himself is interested in, turn your attention to Wells Fargo. (WFC). In the third quarter, Buffett — yes, this is very much his stock — picked up another 11.5 million shares of Wells Fargo boosting Berkshire’s stake in the bank to more than 420 million shares. The current market value of those 11 million new Wells Fargo shares is more than the entire Deere stake.

Benefits of long time horizons in stock market investing (DailyMirror)
“Always invest in the long term” is the mantra employed by Warren Buffett, the most famous long-term equity investor, who is a living testament to the potential benefits of thinking long term. A survey of the trading activities of the investors at the Colombo bourse reveals the behaviour consistent with both value and growth investing strategies (discussed below). The vast majority of empirical findings based on the observation on historical stock returns reveal that trading anomalies such as value and growth investing, which offer superior returns tend to persist regardless of one’s beliefs on market efficiency.

Spaniard with fashion savvy tops Buffett on wealthy list (Omaha)
Another foreign billionaire has passed Warren Buffett on the list of the world’s richest people. He’s Amancio Ortega, 76, who founded a clothing shop in his hometown of La Coruna, Spain, in 1975 and now has more than 1,600 Zara stores in 85 countries on six continents, Bloomberg reported. With economies in Europe in turmoil, Ortega’s “cost-conscious lines are ringing up sales,” the story said. “That turbulence strangely favors a retailer like Zara,” said Nancy Koehn, a retail historian at Harvard Business School. “Among fashionistas, there’s a new badge of status in finding the cool at a lower price.”

What’s Buffett Disciple Pabrai Doing in Messy Chesapeake Stock? (Forbes)
Hedge fund manager Mohnish Pabrai is a huge Warren Buffett fan who humbly credits his rise to riches largely to his study of Berkshire Hathaway’s (BRK.B) value investing strategies. So what’s he doing buying big into a scandal-ridden, money-losing, cash-flow-negative company like Chesapeake Energy (CHK)? Pabrai tripled his investment in Chesapeake during the third quarter, a move that made the oil and gas production company about 20% of his fund’s portfolio, according to records gathered by datarama. It’s now the third largest holding in Pabrai Investments, behind Bank of America Corp (NYSE:BAC) and Citigroup Inc. (NYSE:C) and just ahead of General Motors Company (NYSE:GM) and Goldman Sachs Group (GS).