Barack beats Buffett in stock advice

NEW YORK: President Barack Obama is proving to be a better judge of the stock market than Warren Buffett, the world���s second-richest person.

Bloomberg���s Chart Of The Day data show the Standard & Poor���s 500 Index began its biggest rally since the 1930s after Obama said on March 3 that equities offered bargains for investors with a ���long-term perspective.��� While the measure fell 3.5% over the next week, reaching a 12-year low on March 9, it later surged as much as 37%.

Buffett, chairman of Berkshire Hathaway wrote a New York Times column titled ���Buy American. I Am.��� in October, saying he may put all of his personal investments into US stocks. The S&P 500 then plunged 29 percent through March 9 and is still down 3.9%. Berkshire, based in Omaha, Nebraska, posted its largest loss in at least two decades on May 8, in part because of Buffett���s ���major mistake��� of buying ConocoPhillips shares before oil retreated from a record.

���It���s been impossible to time the bottom,��� said William Stone, chief investment strategist at PNC Financial Services Group Inc���s wealth management unit. Obama ���deserves some credit for his administration putting some of the policies in place that helped us snap that lack of confidence.���

Stocks rebounded as Obama outlined a $787 billion package to stimulate growth, the Treasury unveiled plans to finance as much as $1 trillion in purchases of banks��� distressed assets and the Federal Reserve pledged to buy more than $1 trillion of Treasuries and bonds backed by mortgages to drive down interest rates.

Obama also had better timing than Laszlo Birinyi and Barton Biggs. Birinyi, a pioneer of money-flow analysis, said on December 8 that the US stock market bottomed in November, before the S&P 500 lost another 26%. Biggs, the former Morgan Stanley strategist who runs the hedge fund Traxis Partners LLC, told Bloomberg Television on November 6 that stocks hit their lows in October. His call preceded a 29% drop in the index.