Being compared to one of the most successful and legendary investors in the world should be viewed as a compliment.
A number of market icons have ended up flaming out in spectacular fashion, the most recent example being Sam Bankman-Fried of FTX.
Readers of Fortune's August issue were asked if Bankman-Fried was the next Warren Buffet. Bankman- Fried had built a multi-billion dollar fortune in a short period of time.
Three months later, Bankman- Fried's FTX exchange filed for bankruptcy due to a severe liquidity crunch that will cost investors and potentially FTX customers upwards of $10 billion or more.
Bankman- Fried is not the first market icon to fall. Some investors have struggled after being compared to the legendary chief of the company.
Businessweek put hedge fund manager Eddie Lampert on the cover of its magazine, asking if he was the next Warren Buffet.
After leading a successful revival of Kmart, Lampert and his investors made a lot of money. The magazine wanted to know if he would build it into a new company.
No, the answer was no.
The takeover of Kmart was organized by the chairman of Sears. Those plans were ruined by Amazon. The end result was a long and winding road to bankruptcy that resulted in the total closing of Sears.
In a special edition of Forbes magazine, Bill Ackman was put on the cover with the slogan "BabyBuffett."
Wall Street banked over a billion dollars last year. The cover of the magazine said that he was creating a new company. The profile came after Ackman made a lot of money on pharmaceutical companies and was in the middle of a campaign against Herbalife.
Valeant's stock plummeted more than 90% within three months of the magazine profile. The thesis on the health care company was thrown out by Ackman. Ackman lost $1 billion on his short bet against Herbalife.
The stock market's success over the last two years has been hard to ignore. He made it possible for innovative companies to take the traditional IPO route.
The SPAC boom of 2020 and the early months of 2021. Josh Brown was one of the investors who paid attention.
Brown called the investor "the newBuffett" on a radio show in January.
The bubble that had formed around blank-check firms burst at the end of the year of 2021.
The roots of the curse may be found in the fact thatBuffett displays a legendary patience to let his investments mature and compound for years, a trait that is hard to come by in a frenetic market.
It has not been in making a quick buck on Wall Street that Buffet's success has been. His skill as an investor has been driven by his patience in buying high quality companies and sitting on them for a long time.
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