Strategy - Mirroring successful investors

Question

I came across an interesting investment strategy where you pick some successful investor (say Warren Buffett) and then you find out the stocks they are in and try to buy the same stocks at roughly the same price or even at a discount.

Link : http://thecrux.com/james-altucher-this-is-the-best-investing-strategy-ive-tried-and-ive-tried-them-all/

My question here is - Do you know of some way to know the price at which Warren Buffett bought the shares? (preferably at periods closer to the trade, unlike from the SEC filings which come out quarterly)

Alternatively, how would you go about implementing this strategy?

Answer 1

What you have to realize is that people like Buffet generally don't go out and buy their entire position all at once. They often do what many other investors do - buy in the dips. In other words, they wait for drops as strategic opportunities to add to their positions, trying (when possible) to use dollar cost averaging. Buffett only has to reveal his trades when he acquires a certain percentage of a company's outstanding shares (5% I think?) because the SEC requires it. Otherwise you're going to read about it when he releases his own news or submits required filings that let you figure out what he's in.

Most of the time, by the time anyone really knows what someone like him is buying into, the market has already accounted for his trades by way of rising share prices when he buys and lower prices when he sells.

By the way, if you can figure out how to buy the same stocks as Buffet at the same price or less then that would really be something. He pays people an awful lot of money to figure that out for him now.