Warren Buffet doesn't believe in splits. Hathaway is only slightly off its 1998 peak and will most certainly be among the first stocks to reach its pre-market crash value.
It's not necessarily that Buffet doesn't believe in splits.. He was quoted as saying that he "didn't want to worry about messing with the riff-raff." BTW, that's us.
I hate Warren Buffet. He didn't lose during the dot com bust... neither did a lot of huge investors - many of which recommended the exact opposite things they were doing during that era. Why? because that way we could lose money while they made money. The whole thing about the stock market is that if someone is making money, someone else is losing money. It wasn't the huge wealthy people that never spend their money that lost big during that time. Common investors like us have no real insight other than what the analysts recommend. When analysts recommend exactly the opposite of what they're doing, and when analysts are completely unregulated and their track records unphased, then they can be used as tools to encourage irrational buying and selling.
It seems like more and more the market is just one systematic way to screw the person with less money to invest. People like Warren Buffet, while being hailed as a business genius, are terrible for the economy because they have absolutely zero cash-flow into the retail market.. IE: Buffet doesn't buy stuff with his money.
And.. people like us cannot ever be completely educated about the market until insider trading is totally thrown out of the window. We still can't be completely educated because the very expensive tools that huge financial firms use to trade are unavailable to us. Also, the current best quotes on stocks are also unavailable to us. IE: If Morgan Stanley wants to buy AMD, at 3:55:45 PM, they will maybe get a price quoted at $8.01, whereas Joe Blow would get a quote of $8.10 at 3:55:45 PM. Basically, the spreads are less the higher you get in the financial chain. Certain laws are in place (and currently going into place) that prevent favored spreads like that, but they'll never fully prevent the unfairness that affects the common do-it-yourself investor.
EDIT: Just to clarify something, a spread is the difference between a buy price and a sell price that is just pure profit for whatever firm you are using to buy and sell your stocks. So, the market source will see a spread of maybe 1 penny with a sell price of $8.01 and a buy price of $8.02. Then, the investement will see a spread of maybe $7.59 and $8.05. Then, you, using that firm for investements, will see a spread of maybe $7.50 and $8.10.
That way, those firms are making money no matter if there's buying or selling.
:Q <-- They brought back the new shocked icon?? YAY!