Reuters – Bloomberg and Fortune had weirdly competing stories Wednesday on the subject of Warren Buffett’s “million-dollar bet“. The bet’s duration is ten years from January 1, 2008; Buffett is betting a million dollars that the S&P 500 will outperform a fund of hedge funds.
Fortune’s Carol Loomis has unrivalled access to Buffett — she counts herself among his friends, and always helps him write his annual shareholder’s letter. So her report on the status of the bet, time stamped 8:30am, can be taken as definitive. Loomis doesn’t reveal the components of the fund-of-funds that Buffett is betting against, but she does reveal (“you are reading it here first”, she writes) the standings at the end of Year Four — that is, at the end of calendar 2011. The fund-of-funds has not done well over those four years: it’s down 5.89%. But Buffett’s index fund is doing even worse: it’s down 6.27%.
