Anything Warren Buffett and his investment firm, Berkshire Hathaway, do is bound to attract attention.  Buffett has been a famously successful investor for a number of decades now and investors would be advised to pay attention to his methods which have survived many different fads and economic environments.

I am not putting myself forward as an expert on his techniques, although Buffett makes no bones about sharing these with the rest of us.  His philosophies are seemingly simple; buy when no one else wants to, securing a good price and buy for the long term, Buffett famously said that the ideal holding period for an investment is forever.

We should all probably pay attention then when we read that Berkshire Hathaway has acquired $2.1bn of 'Junk Bond' debt in TXU, a Texan utility.  Of course, when you are sitting on $47bn of cash, that may seem like a reasonable gamble but other buyers have been scarce in this market.  Buffett has probably made a nice little investment and, knowing that he can hold to redemption (i.e., final repayment), will consider the risks to be worth taking.  From a bondholders point of view, utilities make sense because they are unlikely to go out of business and own valuable assets.

As I have said before, we may look back in a couple of years' time and wish we had made more of this credit crunch, such are the bargains that fear creates.