State Street vs Buffett

In a bizarre regulatory filing, a State Street Global Advisors portfolio manager took a few shots at the Mozart of Investing regarding the now-infamous “Fondle the Cube of Gold” op-ed…

From Bloomberg:

Warren Buffett is a great investor, says Christopher Goolgasian, a portfolio manager at State Street Global Advisors Inc. who helps oversee a $74 billion gold fund. The Oracle of Omaha just has it wrong when it comes to the metal.

“While he won’t own gold, he also never owned Apple (up around 1,500% since January of 2000) or Google (up 530% since August of 2004),” Goolgasian said of Buffett in a March 2 regulatory filing for SPDR Gold Trust, an exchange-traded fund managed by Boston-based State Street Corp.

In the filing, Goolgasian wrote that while Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc  has risen 105 percent since January of 2000, gold has climbed nearly fivefold during the same period.

I think Buffett was simply trying to explain the difference between productive assets like oil reserves and farmland versus an asset like gold that only keep its value so long as you believe someone else will want to buy for a higher price than you paid.

No reason to bring missing Apple into this, dude.

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