A simple rule dictates my buying: Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful.

— Warren Buffett

BIG DEAL! I said the same thing last week!

Who needs Warren Buffett when you have a good dog?

Talking about Warren Buffett is making me hungry because his name looks like “buffet.” I wish someone would open an all-you-can-eat buffet restaurant for dogs.

I would invest in that . . .

— Lightning

I saw this headline today on an Associated Press story:

As a dog investor myself, I just wanted to assure you that I am not worried. In fact, I’m sleeping like a puppy . . .

The key to investing is taking a long-term view of the market. Stocks are down? It’s a buying opportunity!

Among the stocks I’m currently recommending are

• PetSmart (PETM) - Woof woof!
• Volcom (VLCM), Under Armour (UA) - I see lots of young humans wearing these brands.
• BJ’s Restaurants (BJRI) - I’ve never been but my owner says it’s really good and always crowded!
• Sonic Corporation (SONC) - I love the commercials with the two people talking in the car! So funny!

— Lightning

OK, now the good news: Hmmm . . . well . . . as long as I have a job, I can make enough to live on . . . I think . . .

Mr. Obama is proposing to raise taxes on capital gains and dividends by a staggering two-thirds, moving the rate up 10 percentage points to 25%, which could curtail investment and business on Wall Street, a backbone of the city’s and state’s economy.

OK, let me get this straight . . . the stock market’s dropping, banks are failing from lack of liquidity, no one wants to invest in American companies, and Obama’s solution is to raise the capital gains tax?!

In the event of an Obama presidency, I will taking a long position in blankets, canned goods and shotgun shells . . .

Prediction — at job interviews, these people will hear something I heard a lot during my own interviews: “We’re seeing a lot of applicants from the mortgage industry.”

Yeah . . . tell me something I didn’t know.

The Elite Mortgage Daily Blog has helpfully provided a brief history of IndyMac stock:

Our gain in net worth during 2003 was $13.6 billion, which increased the per-share book value of both our Class A and Class B stock by 21%. Over the last 39 years (that is, since present management took over) per-share book value has grown from $19 to $50,498, a rate of 22.2% compounded annually.

Hey now!

Buffett is one of only two people that I know of (Peter Lynch is the other) with a documented record of making a lot of money for people over a significant period of time.

You may remember back in the dot-com boom years that Buffett, despite his excellent long-term track record, was frequently raked over the coals for his refusal to hold tech stocks in the Berkshire portfolio.

Here’s what Buffett said in his 1999 shareholder letter, a year in which Berkshire had its worst-ever performance relative to the S&P 500:

. . . we don’t own stocks of tech companies, even though we share the general view that our society will be transformed by their products and services. Our problem — which we can’t solve by studying up — is that we have no insights into which participants in the tech field possess a truly durable competitive advantage. . . .

If we have a strength, it is in recognizing when we are operating well within our circle of competence and when we are approaching the perimeter. Predicting the long-term economics of companies that operate in fast-changing industries is simply far beyond our perimeter. If others claim predictive skill in those industries — and seem to have their claims validated by the behavior of the stock market — we neither envy nor emulate them. Instead, we just stick with what we understand.

It’s been a long time now since I’ve seen any “Warren Buffett is an idiot for not owning Internet stocks” articles . . .