It may sound like heresy to tell people they should not follow what Warren Buffett is doing, yet I am going to do exactly that.  Note that I am not saying that long-term investing cannot work — I believe it can — but copying Warren Buffet can only be done one way: Buying Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.B).

Even though Warren is 80, he knows how to pick good people to run his numerous businesses and I am confident that when the changeover to a new CEO comes and the stock sells off a lot — because this is likely to be the reaction to the departure of the most successful investor of our time — it would be a buying opportunity.

People try to spin any long-term shareholding strategy as “investing like Buffett” — this is wrong. Buffett owns large insurance businesses where he gets to have the float (the insurance premiums after they are paid in, but before they are paid out as claims) and invest it as he wishes. Most insurance companies invest that float conservatively in bonds, but Warren has been known to buy stocks when he sees value. He is a masterful stock picker, but most people, or even fund managers, don’t have that “free float money” to invest.

Seeing that we were going into some rough waters after 2000, Buffett transformed Berkshire into more of an operating company than a pure financial holding. Berkshire’s operating subsidiaries have grown in importance over the past 10 years as he took private companies with solid return on equity, low debt and a lot of free cash flow perfect for the type of investing Warren does. He buys other businesses that generate free cash flow with the cash from the current Berkshire subsidiaries, or stocks when the opportunity presents itself.

Berkshire recently had a huge railroad acquisition — the reason why the B-shares split to a more normal level — which Warren says is a good inflation hedge. Warren believes that we will have bad inflation. This is the correct strategic view five years out, but he is ignoring the tactical deflation that we will have in the meantime. While he has the money to ignore it, most investors cannot and should not replicate that “ignore deflation” strategy.

Looking at his top 20 holdings, I see a lot of stocks I don’t like. There are many financials here that have rallied a lot in the past 18 months, but before that they nearly imploded. I see another leg down for those financials in the next couple of years and I don’t advocate buying them at present prices.

I like ConocoPhillips (NYSE: COP), but most of Warren’s Stocks have been dead money for years. With the S&P 500 registering a down decade and Berkshire being so large, he can only afford to buy large cap stocks for liquidity purposes, so he is captive of the problematic developed markets.

If Berkshire was smaller, he would probably be buying a lot of stocks in Brazil, China and India, but his size is a big deterrent to buying into the more exciting emerging markets. He did have a huge winner in PetroChina (NYSE: PTR) and he has a huge winner in the China-listed BYD electric car company. But, his emerging market moves are relatively small, because he simply cannot sell his U.S. holdings — you can.

While I would advocate buying BRK.B stock — especially when no one wants it — I would not advocate buying many of Berkshire’s equity holdings at present.

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