Wealthy and Smart People Lose Money Too

Their reputations precede them.

They stature is recognized around the world.

But just like the rest of us, they lose money in a crappy economy.

In a report by MSNBC they confirm that Warren Buffett is losing lots of money. So are Kirk Kerkorian, Carl Icahn and Sumner Redstone.

They are still plenty rich, but their losses, illustrate how few have been spared in today’s punishing market when even big-name investors, corporate executives and hedge-fund titans are all watching their wealth evaporate.

The portfolio damage for some of these high-flyers has soared to billions of dollars in recent months.

And they can’t just blame the market’s downdraft  some did themselves in with badly timed stock purchases or margin calls on shares bought with loans.

Buffett, company, Berkshire Hathaway share prices, have falling by about $13.6 billion, or 22 percent, so far this year, to leave his holdings valued at $48.1 billion.

Oracle founder and CEO Larry Ellison has seen his equity stake fall by $6.2 billion, or about 24 percent, to $20.1 billion.

Steve Ballmer, whose company equity fell, by $5.1 billion to $9.4 billion; Amazon.com’s Jeff Bezos, whose equity fell by $3.6 billion to $5.7 billion; and News Corp.’s Rupert Murdoch, with a $4 billion contraction to $3 billion.

A growing number of executives at companies including Boston Scientific, XTO Energy Corp. and Williams Sonoma Inc. have been forced to sell stakes in their companies to cover stock loans to banks and brokers. The company stock was used as collateral for those loans. The falling prices triggered what is known as a “margin call.”

The CEO Aubrey McClendon Chesapeake Energy Corp. was forced to sell almost 95 percent of his holdings, representing more than a 5 percent stake in the company to meet a margin call.

Earlier this year, billionaire Kerkorian’s paid about $1 billion, at an average share price of near $7.10, for about 141 million shares in Ford Motor Corp. That represented a 6.49 percent stake in Ford.

Kerkorian sold one batch of 7.3 million shares at an average price of $2.43 each, and the another batch of  26.4 million shares at an average sale price of $2.01 each. That means for about a quarter of his total Ford holdings, he got $71 million.

Activist investor Icahn bought about 69 million shares for a nearly 5 percent ownership stake in Yahoo at an average cost of somewhere around $21.

With the company’s shares trading around $13 each. That means he’s down more than $500 million since late June.

Just to show you, no matter how smart you are or how deep your pockets your fate still lies in market conditions and we all make mistakes.