In God we trust; all others pay cash

Even the world's top investor made "dumb" mistakes, like buying an oil & gas stock at its peak, and a couple of banking stocks which tanked. The difference is that he readily admitted and apologised to his shareholders for his errors of omissions. He didn't make excuses about the "unsatisfactory performance" or used past successes to excuse himself.

In fact, considering the difficult circumstances, he did alright, making a US$5 billion profit in 2008, instead of huge crippling losses by the top U.S. banks and motor companies.

Nevertheless, as with the plunge of stock markets worldwide, his Berkshire Hathaway share price got battered down 47% from a 52-week high of US$147,000 (there appears a gaping error on this in the ABC News article above) to $78,600 a share (last done on 27 Feb 09).