The Homa Files

Excerpted from AP, “CEOs, famous investors hit hard by market plunge”, Nov. 2, 2008

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The Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index, has lost about 36 percent since January, with every single sector – including once thriving energy and utilities – seeing declines of about 20 percent or more.

Such losses in the last year have wiped out an estimated $2 trillion in equity value from 401(k) and individual retirement accounts, nearly half the holdings in those plans. Similar losses are seen in the portfolios of private and public pension plans, which have lost $1.9 trillion, the researchers found.

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Here’s something that might provide a bit of solace amid the plunging values in your retirement accounts: Warren Buffett is losing lots of money, too. So are Kirk Kerkorian, Carl Icahn and Sumner Redstone.

And they can’t just blame the market’s downdraft – some did themselves in with badly timed stock purchases or margin calls on shares bought with loans.

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The average year-to-date decline is 49 percent for the corporate stock holdings of CEOs .

Topping that list is Buffett, who has seen the value of equity in his company, Berkshire Hathaway, fall by about $13.6 billion, or 22 percent, so far this year, to leave his holdings valued at $48.1 billion.

Oracle founder and CEO Larry Ellison has seen his equity stake fall by $6.2 billion, or about 24 percent, to $20.1 billion.

Rounding out the top five in that study were Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer, whose company equity fell by $5.1 billion to $9.4 billion; Amazon.com’s Jeff Bezos, whose equity fell by $3.6 billion to $5.7 billion; and News Corp.’s Rupert Murdoch, with a $4 billion contraction to $3 billion.

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“Fishing isn’t called catching, and investing isn’t just called making money,” Hansen said. “We have to remember that things can go down by a lot.”

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Full article:
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2008/11/02/ap5636866.html?partner=alerts

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