Berkshire Hathaway Inc (BRK.B)

[gfp927z]

>> PG&E <<


Yes, which shows how even conservative stocks can blow up, so better off with a sector/index ETF imo.

A few years back I did an experiment comparing my own custom Energy ETF vrs the Vanguard Energy ETF (VDE). Over on Motif Investing you can create your own custom ETF, holding up to 30 stocks, and buy the whole thing for only $9.95. So I loaded up a custom ETF with my own picks and then compared its performance with the Vanguard sector ETF.

It was during a particularly bad period for the energy sector, and during the downturn the Vanguard ETF performed a lot better. While the entire sector was doing poorly, my custom ETF had more extreme blowups, and was a lot less diversified than the Vanguard sector ETF, so the performance suffered. Up to that point I had viewed myself as a pretty good stock picker, but this 'experiment' indicated otherwise.