Ive no problems with those two cases at all although I have plenty about the morality of the financial services industry in general. My real problems come from the extremely poor performance of the vast majority who still make fortunes off the backs of ordinary investors. Very few are worth a fraction of what they are paid.

You see Buffett just happened to be living in America
Someone inevitably was going to make a lot of money investing in American companies
It was an almost perfect time and place to be
Someone had to do so , it happened to be him

Yes could just as easily have been you I suppose. Just bad luck it wasnt.

He lost 28 billion donchnite

If the time is right , if the country is right , and thousands of people are investing
Someone , like Buffett will make a serious amount of money - it’s inevitable

Morality is for he birds Dotchinite. Plenty of bad morality and corruption on display in our public services, education, police, politics, social services and church to be too sanctimonious about the financial services industry that pays massive revenues that help to fund our public services. It's not perfect but in general the compliance and measures that are in place to protect consumers is very good. More and more of the bad eggs forced out with higher qualifications needed to do the job and better protections in place. I think the Police should take note.

End of January Jacob Rees Mogg's company sold its last many millions of shares in Putin's UN sanctioned Sberbank - must have been something he heard in cabinet   - used to be called Insider Trading. @fca

i'm insider trader

Imagine losing 28 billion and pretending to know what you’re doing

i can understand lfc's logic

say you take 100 random people and ask them to predict the score of Chelsea v Lille

some will get it right

does that mean they know a lot about football?

now if they keep predictin stuff right long term that is different

people will sometimes get stuff right but for the wrong reasons, they will just be lucky

It’s not necessarily different Giuseppe
If you are in America over that particular time in history
Someone is going to get it right longterm - probably a few

yes of course with an economy which is generally growing it is easier to make money on the stock market

"I would also blame the education curriculum that places more importance on children knowing angles than personal finances and how investments work."

agree with that

kids should be taught how the economy works (and the law too)

1,000 people predict the score of Chelsea v Lille

100 get it right

out of that 100, 10 get the score right in the next game

out of that 10, 1 will get three in a row

is that one person a genius or just lucky?

That’s why I say it was America that made Buffett
It was the country

so the question is, is Buffett a lucky grandmother or not?

i wish i could afford coca cola

it's tesco 50c cola for me

basic human biology and nutrition too, diseases etc

so much that isn't taught

baisc geography too

naming every country on a map should be kindergarten stuff

Any commodity without a history of revenue, profit, bricks-and-mortar and a workable business model is never a good investment eg crypto-currency.

Can anyone explain how BTC, ILV, EGC, etc, can be "valued" in the stratosphere?