First on the list: by copying others, imitators allow other individuals to act as filters, efficiently sorting through available options. Finance professors Gerald Martin and John Puthenpurackal examined what would happen if an investor did nothing but copy the moves of celebrated investor Warren Buffett. (Buffett’s investment choices are periodically made public, when his company files a report with the Securities and Exchange Commission.) An individual who simply buys what Buffett is buying, the researchers found, will earn an average of more than 10 percent above market returns.
