No. of Recommendations: 16
Buffett proved what he's been preaching for 60 years, market timing is very hard!
Timing stock prices is indeed hard. Pricing is pretty easy though, the only difficult part being sticking with it. That's why he's stuck to pricing rather than timing.
Mainly it involves ignoring the clarion calls of "swing ya bum" from armchair enthusiasts who know better.
Buybacks have a wonderful theoretical circularity. A firm with disciplined capital allocation is worth a lot, so buybacks at a reasonable price seem good. But a firm that does buybacks at merely reasonable valuation levels isn't a disciplined capital allocator (buybacks at fair value give zero incremental value to remaining shares) so the business isn't that attractive after all. The fewer buybacks they do, the more they should do. The more they do, the fewer they should do.
Don't swing, ya bum.
Jim
