Would you buy the shares at the price before the price dropped?Psychoserenity wrote:How is that any difference? Investing when they are at their most desperate, so you can make greater return, is making money from their misfortune. If someone genuinely wanted to enable them to get out of trouble, for a fair exchange, they would buy stocks at the price they were before they dropped - but I don't think capitalism would work if people did things fairly.JOZeldenrust wrote: Buffets advice isn't to make money off the misfortune of others, it's to make money by enabling those unfortunate others to get out of trouble.
If that's what happened, then there wouldn't be a stock market.
It's not like the people who sold were the "little guys who got taken advantage of." On both sides of the stock market ball there were intelligent, qualified investors, and on both sides of the ball there are amateurs and poor folk. Some followed Buffett, others made the decision that Japan might suffer an even worse disaster. Had there been a meltdown of a reactor, it may well be that in the near term those that sold would have been the ones that made the right decision, and Buffett the wrong one.
Needless to say, if everyone just stopped buying stock the Japanese economy would collapse. Moreover, if the buyers now had to buy at the prices of two weeks ago, then those that held their stocks which are now worth much less would be the ones benefitting unfairly. Why should they?
