The Dumb Money

There's a lot of it sloshing around in the market today, as shown by the mania over stock splits

Has Warren Buffett left billions of dollars on the table by never splitting the stock of his company? It sure seems that way. In the past few weeks, dozens of firms from Internet darling eBay to Xerox to Microsoft have announced splits and watched their stocks soar. Last week athletic-shoe company K-Swiss joined the fun by announcing healthy earnings and a 2-for-1 split. Its shares jumped 23%. To the same point, when Cisco Systems on Feb. 2 posted earnings that beat Wall Street estimates but failed to declare an expected stock split, its shares dropped 2%.

Yet Buffett, the fabled investor...

Want the full story?

Subscribe Now

Subscribe
Subscribe

Learn more about the benefits of being a TIME subscriber

If you are already a subscriber sign up — registration is free!