Warren Buffett and IBM: Praying the stock price goes nowhere. The maths explains why

Warren Buffett bought a very large stake in IBM and then told his shareholders what he was hoping for. He hoped the share price would go nowhere for the next five years. That is not a slip of the pen. He says it twice, works out the arithmetic, and puts a figure on how much money the disappointing outcome would make him.Most of us have the opposite reflex. The stock goes up, we feel clever. It goes down, we feel sick. Buffett thinks that reflex