No. of Recommendations: 3
Without passing judgment at this point, since WEB hasn't responded (yet), on their face the multiple instances reported in the story run directly counter to WEB's repeated statements about his policy of steering clear of Berkshire investments.
In this new report, I don't think there's a single example of a trade that was necessarily in conflict with Buffett's policy of never front-running Berkshire trades. We have known for a long time that there is some overlap between Buffett's personal holdings and Berkshire's, and that Buffett claims to have gone to extraordinary lengths to make sure there are no trades that are in conflict of interest. Now we additionally know that there have been some sales of Berkshire securities whose timing was in the ballpark of times when Berkshire has also been trading or commenting on the same stocks. But it seems to that without more detail on the timing, we don't have enough to say whether these instances run counter to Buffett's stated policy or not.
I am pretty confident that Buffett will want to respond to these accusations and demonstrate that all the trades' timing was kosher, but that is still just a presumption, just as it was my presumption before this recent news.
