Berkshire Hathaway, the investment group run by Warren Buffett, has lost nearly $1 billion (€810 million) on the foreign exchange markets this year as his long-term bet against the dollar turned sour.
Mr Buffett began shorting the dollar in 2002 due to his concern about the sustainability of the US trade deficit and still has $21.5 billion worth of contracts in a variety of currencies such as the euro, sterling and Japanese yen.
But the 8 per cent recovery in the value of the dollar against a trade weighted basket of currencies since the beginning of this year has taken the shine off the $2 billion in pre-tax gains he booked during the greenback's earlier falls.
Berkshire's latest quarterly filings out this weekend show his forward contracts produced a pre-tax loss of $619 million for the second quarter of 2005, taking the first half loss to $926 million.
Mr Buffett cautioned against reading too much into the figures. His health warning over the numbers contained in his quarterly regulatory filings also extends to the profit and revenue figures that most companies live or die by.
The sparse filing issued late on Friday showed that second-quarter net income rose 13 per cent to $1.45 billion, or $941 per Class A share, from $1.28 billion, or $834 per share, a year earlier.
Revenue climbed 1 per cent to $18.13 billion, despite a 2 per cent fall in insurance-related revenues.
Mr Buffet claims the numbers are a poor guide to performance because Berkshire only records gains and losses when investments are sold, except in rare instances when accounting rules require temporary impairment charges.
Otherwise, the results revealed Berkshire's eclectic mix of operating businesses were growing strongly, with pre-tax earnings for non-insurance activities up from $820 million to $911 million.
Berkshire also revealed that Milan Vukelic, the chief executive of Faraday, the UK insurance broker controlled by reinsurer General Re, had been sacked.
