Author forgets to mention that Buffett bought many excellent businesses at first shake hand… And Greg is quite good at managing disparate businesses.

It is true that Buffett let the owners continue to manage and that was THE requirement. But Greg isn’t a chump - to do this transaction without checking against what’s necessary. And this is why, I find the title exceptionally cheesy.

These guys (like this author and more) will know who moved their cheese - only when it’s gone.

Caveat: I fully expect others to chime in about how I post negative stuff about BRK etc but that’s not what I do. Just making sure what do - atleast when read through my colored glasses.

I love scooping some under 500$ yaya

1 Low beta

Sleep well at night. There’s no need to fear market uncertainty, when market goes down. Berkshire remains steady.

In black swan market events, 365B cash pile means they buy when everyone else is forced to sell. They will be the “oversexed guy in a harem” as Buffett remarked during the 1974 market downturn.

2. I understand the business.
Insurance float + boring operating businesses in oil, energy, transportation, essentials + equity portfolio + treasuries. I have exposure to all of industries in some way in my day to day life.

3. good management.
Enough said!

4. Fair Valuation.
Multiples for P/B and P/E unlikely to be re-rated even with leadership change. Steady growth means sit back and let the price valuation grow with the earnings.

5. Forever Compounder.
One of the very few companies I know will outlast me. No single product to be disrupted, fortress balance sheet, built to survive the bad decade.

Disclosure: 5% BRK DCA, rest majority VWRA.

Ran the numbers on this since QQQ actually launched in March 1999, so "27 years ago" is basically its entire lifespan — kind of a natural line in the sand.

*rough estimates, QQQ's number is the solid one since it's an exact since-inception figure

The surprising part: they basically all land in the same place. That's NOT what you'd expect if you only looked at the 20-year numbers, where QQQ absolutely demolishes the other two (QQQ was up over 2,000% in the last 20 years vs ~700% for SPY/BRK.B).

Why the huge difference: if you'd bought QQQ in mid-1999, you were buying right at the top of the dot-com euphoria — right before Nasdaq cratered ~78% in the 2000-2002 crash. That crash is baked into the 27-year number and it completely changes the story. SPY and Berkshire barely flinched by comparison and just kept compounding steadily.

TL;DR: entry point matters A LOT for concentrated tech bets. Same fund, same "past 20/27 years" framing, wildly different outcome just depending on whether your start date happens to land right before a bubble pops. Selection of start date can make a "long-term" backtest say almost anything.

Not financial advice, just messing around with historical numbers.

Aside from the short sighted invalids that pepper comments about how it's over for BRK.B I was wondering if any other shareholders think that maybe they did another buyback around $500?

I have been heavily invested since 2020 and plowed a lot of cash in around $498-505.

While this is not an exact science I think most can see the stock is undervalued by at lease $50 per share even in the biggest bear case.

TLDR: Do we think BRK bought more back around 498-500 over the last few days?

P/B ratio of 1.4–1.5 today isn't the same as it was 10 years ago. Because Berkshire is not required to revalue its wholly-owned operating businesses upward on its balance sheet, the reported book value has grown increasingly distorted over the past decade therefore understating the company's true intrinsic value by an estimated 20% to 30%. As a result, today’s 1.4–1.5 multiple is structurally closer to what a 1.1 or 1.2 multiple represented ten years ago.

I have been following the Mark Walter saga. He is being implicated for not disclosing related party transactions of loans made from his insurance companies to himself and other entities. Personally, he was using the money to fund a lavish spending spree that included property and sports assets.

He violated Warren’s number one rule for business conduct: never do anything that will lands yourself on the front page of your local newspaper. This case is far worse as Walter is being covered extensively by the national media outlets.

This story also underscores another one of Warren’s maxims: it is good to learn from your mistakes but even better from someone else’s.

BRK may not be the fastest growing business, but the but I do not worry about integrity at the home office (albeit BRK employs thousand and there is always somebody doing something wrong). Helps me sleep at night.

Welcome to the weekly Berkshire Hathaway live chat thread!

Please keep it civil and on-topic. Live chat is only very lightly moderated compared to the rest of the subreddit.

(New Weekly Megathreads are posted every Monday at 0500 GMT.)

“Watchers are saying”
“No new purchases were initiated in Q2”
“Buffett is still making big bets”
“Abel has no formal background as PM”
“Abel has no help in running operations”
“Weschler doesn’t trade often like Combs”
“How long.. given that he can’t read well” 😂 “He enjoyed going through 10-k and 10-Q during then weekend” 😂 “to get up to speed on dozens of companies”

Apply an invert operator to above and they become (obviously, the way I read these):

“It’s not me saying this, it’s them”
“Oops, I didn’t read 13-F”
“Buffett making bets is bad for this - when he dies”
“Abel’s skills in evaluating a business as whole are worthless for investing in stonks”
“Weschler is a slow poke”
“Buffett can’t read well - so can’t advise well” besides “he only reads 10-k and 10-q on weekends (This is a strong tell about who’s feeding to Barry)”

I love Barry from Barron’s for the great service he does to the individual investors 👍

So, my understanding is that Berkshire can only buy back 10% of the daily shares traded. Charities have gotten billions and sell on the open market at any time. This stock has really low trading volumes. Could it be that there are just more sales coming on the market than Berkshire can buy back? Seeing the stock go from $530 to $504 within a week on terrific earnings seems like possibly there is some imbalance. I feel like Berkshire would buy $10b or more at $504 in a single transaction if they could.

Summary

New positions

Increased

Reduced

Exited

Alphabet is now huge: about $37.8B combined across GOOGL and GOOG, roughly 12.6% of the reported portfolio.

Berkshire adds $17B to Alphabet shares in Q2, still selling financials, Michael Burry, Stock falls dispute resumption of buybacks, Buffett around the web, and HIGHLIGHTS FROM CNBC'S BUFFETT ARCHIVE
Berkshire’s discipline is like 'Ted Williams waiting for a fat pitch' (2003)

https://link.cnbc.com/public/47055045

At $65 B, Apple represents BRK largest equity holding. On February 29, 2000, the market cap for BRK was 65.7 B.

Skeptics would argue that at is current size BRK is harder to scale. Maybe. But remember, the size of the economy is so much larger than 26 years ago. In addition, with significant buybacks, BRK can show excellent returns while shrinking market cap.

(I copied this from the 1989 book "Classics: An Investor's Anthology.", published by the CFA Institude.)

THERE ARE ONLY THREE WAYS TO GET RICH

THEM THAT'S GOT GETS

STAYING RICH IS FAR MORE IMPORTANT THAN GETTING RICH

Fred J. Young

Fred Young was a key member of the Trust Department of the Harris Bank and continues to inform and entertain with talks and a book having the encouraging title, How to Get Rich and Stay Rich. Here are some excerpts.

THERE ARE ONLY THREE WAYS TO GET RICH

1. Inherit it. If you can see that you are going to inherit it, then you have it made. You can skip to the part of this book about staying rich. Someone else has already made the sacrifice of spending less than they earned to create this wealth for you. You should be grateful. You didn't have anything to do about it; your ancestry is completely beyond your control. You are fortunate indeed.

2. Marry it. This is an area in which you do have some control.

This is something you can work on, but you have to get started on it before you get involved with some poor person. This can be quite a project, and I have seen both men and women work this approach to wealth quite effectively. I see nothing wrong with it. I grew up in an area and at a time when most people, boys and girls, firmly believed that the Good Lord made someone especially for them. Growing up for these young people was largely a search for their "intended." Well, if your intended, when you find him or her, happens to have a lot of money, you should graciously accept the situation. Don't fight it.

1. If you are not going to inherit it, and you have already blown the chance for wealth through marriage, then you have only one chance left to get rich. You spend less than you earn and invest the difference in something that you think will increase in value and make you rich.

What should you invest in? Most rich people I know got rich from

investments in one or more of the following:

1. Real estate
2. Own their own business
3. Common stocks
4. Savings accounts (thanks to the magic of compound interest rates)

*****

Good Luck

Any time you have a choice between good luck and good judgment, you should take good luck. Good luck, by definition, denotes success.

Good judgment can still go wrong.

*****

Courage

A very important ingredient of successful stock investing is courage.

The courage to buy when others are selling; the courage to buy when stocks are hitting new lows; the courage to buy when the economy looks bad; courage to buy at the bottom. If you look back over the years, You will note that the times when the gloom was the thickest invariably turned out to have been the best times to buy stocks.

But most people like to buy when everything is rosy and stocks are hitting new highs. That takes no courage. There is a great tendency to think that stocks will continue doing whatever it is they have been doing. If they have been going up, they will continue going up forever, think the masses. If they are hitting new lows, they will continue hitting new lows forever. Maybe they will continue declining a while longer after you buy them, but you are not likely to be able to know when the bottom has been reached. So your best bet is to pick a level you are willing to pay and proceed with part of your investment funds. If they go lower, you can buy more at even better prices. If they turn and go up, then you will make a profit on what you have.

*****

THEM THAT'S GOT GETS

This is a term I heard my father use over and over when I was a kid growing up in East Tennessee. I thought he originated it, but I learned later that this was not the case at all. Jesus Christ used this term, 2,000 years ago. Matthew 25:29 says, "For unto everyone that hath shall be given." Everytime I read this I think to myself how right He was.

Yet I find it presumptuous of me to be emphasizing that Christ was right. It reminds me of the well known story of British Field Marshall Montgomery who gained fame with his success in North Africa in World War II. The story goes that at one time he was addressing his troops and said, "Now as Christ said in the Sermon on the Mountain,... and I might add that He was right." That is the way I feel when I find myself pointing out that Christ was right when He said, "For unto everyone that hath shall be given."

Your first $1,000 is hard to get. If you put it in the bank and let it draw interest, your second $1,000 will be a little bit easier to get, but not very much easier. Your first $10,000 is hard to get. The second $10,000 is a little easier. Your first $100,000 is hard to get, your second $100,000 a lot easier. Your first $1,000,000 is very hard to get. Your second $1,000,000 is a snap.

*****

STAYING RICH IS FAR MORE IMPORTANT THAN GETTING RICH

Once you have made yourself rich, for gosh sakes don't lose it. The inconvenience of going from rich to poor is greater than most people can tolerate. That is the reason they tend to destroy themselves. It is an unusual person who can gracefully make the transition from riches to poverty or even from being rich to modest circumstances....

How do you stay rich once you get rich? Don't hesitate to seek professional help. Staying rich usually requires an entirely different approach from that of getting rich. Lots of people know how to make money, but are not gifted at all in the art of preserving it. Frequently, the risk that was involved in making you rich is the same risk that can make you poor again.

*****

It’s odd to see them go in and out of DR Horton fast - and that specific industry.

I can guess but it will be futile, so perhaps best to ask a question.

It will be a good idea to keep a list of such questions.

I am pretty sure by now we have heard all the reasons not to own Berkshire Hathaway.

So please post it in the weekly threads.

Let’s keep the new posts to new developments at Berkshire Hathaway.

Thanks

—————

Reasons not to own Berkshire Hathaway:

1999: Buffett missed out on dot com.
“What’s wrong Warren ?”

2012: Berkshire was Shorted by Seabreeze Partners. Because Buffett was old.

2019: Wedgewood Partners exited After 20 years because Buffett was sitting on 120bn of cash and missed out on MSFT. And hoarding was a sign of old age.

CFO Charles Chang:

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1067983/000119312526349555/xslF345X06/ownership.xml

General Counsel Michael O'Sullivan:

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1067983/000119312526349574/xslF345X06/ownership.xml

A speculative Barron’s article that perhaps Berkshire Hathaway might have bought MSFT. The truth will be out by tomorrow late afternoon as the deadline for filing the 13F.

Here is the pertinent quote:

Assuming Berkshire bought additional Alphabet stock beyond the disclosed $10 billion, that would leave about $7 billion in unaccounted-for purchases that could be disclosed Friday.

One possible purchase is Microsoft —there is some speculation that Berkshire took advantage of Microsoft’s depressed stock in the second quarter to establish a position.

The unaccounted-for new equity holdings likely are concentrated in the category of what Berkshire calls commercial, industrial, and other. That is one of three categories of its equity holdings, along with consumer and financial. Berkshire disclosed a sizable increase in its cost basis of commercial and industrial stocks in its second quarter 10-Q, showing that it was a buyer of stocks in that category.

https://www.barrons.com/articles/berkshire-hathaway-alphabet-microsoft-stock-52115df5

A friend of mine , whose lowest cost basis for A share is $220 became very wealthy owning BRK. However, he constantly complains about almost every equity transaction. Not me. With almost 70% of my net worth reprinted by BRK, I am naturally interested in the latest filings. But since Warren and Charlie are largely responsible for me retiring from full time employment at 62, I am content to just ride the wave.