Berkshire Hathaway Stock Quotes

stocks of companies selling commodity-like products should come with a warning label: “Competition may prove hazardous to human wealth.

students need only two well-taught courses—How to Value a Business, and How to Think About Market Prices. Your goal as an investor should simply be to purchase, at a rational price, a part interest in an easily-understandable business whose earnings are virtually certain to be materially higher five, ten and twenty years from now. Over time, you will find only a few companies that meet these standards—so when you see one that qualifies, you should buy a meaningful amount of stock. You must also resist the temptation to stray from your guidelines: If you aren’t willing to own a stock for ten years, don’t even think about owning it for ten minutes. Put together a portfolio of companies whose aggregate earnings march upward over the years, and so also will the portfolio’s market value. Though it’s seldom recognized, this is the exact approach

Every year Buffett explains that he wants Berkshire to have great long-term shareholders and that splitting the stock would only work against that.

automatically compound. If you need cash, you can sell stock and pay capital gains tax at a lower rate than a dividend would be taxed.

Yet he knew that stocks would be better than bonds or cash over the long run.

The valuation picture is very much affected by our zero-based interest rate structure. Clearly, stocks are worth far more when government bonds yield 1% than when they yield 5%.

Buffett reminded folks that to buy a stock is to buy part ownership of a business. Don’t get hung up on daily price quotes. Instead, think about business performance and what you would pay for the business, just as you would a farm.

As a value investor, your ideal situation is to find a company increasing its intrinsic value. Ideally, the company would be one with a declining stock price, thus creating an even better bargain as time unfolds. No one has employed these principles more effectively than Buffett and Munger.

Warren Buffett, chairman of Berkshire Hathaway and investor of legendary repute: "Most investors, both institutional and individual, will find that the best way to own common stocks is through an index fund that charges minimal fees. Those following this path are sure to beat the net results (after fees and expenses) delivered by the great majority of investment professionals.

financial markets will become divorced from reality — you can count on that. More Jimmy Lings will appear. They will look and sound authoritative. The press will hang on their every word. Bankers will fight for their business. What they are saying will recently have “worked.” Their early followers will be feeling very clever. Our suggestion: Whatever their line, never forget that 2+2 will always equal 4. And when someone tells you how old-fashioned that math is ---zip up your wallet, take a vacation and come back in a few years to buy stocks at cheap prices.

Basically, Graham breaks the art of investing down into two simple variables – price and value. Value is what a business is worth. Price is what you have to pay to get it. Given the stock market’s manic-depressive behavior, numerous occasions arise where a business’ market price is distinctly out of line with its true business value. In such instances, an investor may be able to purchase a dollar of value for just 50 cents. Note that there is no mention here of interest rates, economic forecasts, technical charts, market cycles, etc. The only issues are price and value. I should also note that Graham emphasizes a large margin of safety. The strategy is not to buy a dollar of value for 97 cents. Rather, the gap should be dramatic so as to absorb the effects of miscalculation and worse-than-average luck.

Eventually, Charlie and Rick became fifty-fifty owners of a controlling block of stock in the company, with its management owning the rest. After some time passed, a situation arose where Guerin needed to cash out of the investment. "I still was very poor. We had an informal understanding that one would take the other out if either needed to get out. I went to Charlie and said I need to use that money elsewhere. He said fine, figure out what you want." Guerin looked over the accounting statements and thought about it. "I told him it was worth $200,000. Charlie said 'No, you're wrong about that.' I said to myself, Oh darn,' because I needed $200,000. He said, 'It's worth $300,000.' And he pulled out a check and wrote it. I would have been delighted with $200,000. I would have been the happiest man on earth. It was an opportunity for him to show me how stupid I was," Guerin said with a chuckle. "Charlie has a saying, 'Think about it a little more and you will agree with me because you're smart and I'm right.

Smith in his book and with his life is telling us how to live. Seek wisdom and virtue. Behave as if an impartial spectator is watching you. Use the idea of an impartial spectator to step outside yourself and see yourself as others see you. Use that vision to know yourself. Avoid the seductions of money and fame, for they will never satisfy. How to be virtuous is not so obvious, and that comes next. But I want to close this chapter with Peter Buffett, the man who ended up selling his Berkshire Hathaway stock for $90,000 and giving up the $100 million he could have had in order to pursue a career as a musician. A few years ago, Peter Buffett reflected on his decision to sell his Berkshire Hathaway stock to pursue his dreams in his memoir, Life Is What You Make It. He claims to have no regrets. But could a life as a successful musician possibly be worth giving up $100 million? Wouldn’t $100 million be even more pleasant? Then you ask yourself—what could he have with the extra millions? A nicer car? He could have a Lamborghini Veneno Roadster that retails for about $4 million. Or he could settle for the lovely Ferrari Spider, at $300,000; he could have a couple of those. He could have a mansion you and I can only imagine, anywhere in the world. Like Onassis, he could own an island or two rather than enduring the indignity of visiting an island in the Mediterranean, say, and having to share it with others while staying at a nice hotel. Could those physical pleasures possibly be worth sacrificing the life in music that he dreamed of and ultimately achieved? I think Peter Buffett got a bargain. He gave up $100 million and got something—hard as it is to imagine—that was even more precious. A good life. I think Adam Smith would agree with me.

I went back and read all the Berkshire Hathaway annual reports. My life changed course as a result.

Most institutional and individual investors will find the best way to own common stock is through an index fund that charges minimal fees. Those following this path are sure to beat the net results [after fees and expenses] delivered by the great majority of investment professionals.”1 —Warren Buffett, chairman of Berkshire Hathaway

But it is the long-term merits of the index fund—broad diversification, weightings paralleling those of the stocks that comprise the market, minimal portfolio turnover, and low cost—that commend it to wise investors. Consider these words from perhaps the wisest investor of all, Warren E. Buffett, from the 1996 Annual Report of Berkshire Hathaway Corporation: Most investors, both institutional and individual, will find that the best way to own common stocks is through an index fund that charges minimal fees. Those following this path are sure to beat the net results (after fees and expenses) delivered by the great majority of investment professionals.

Of all the professional money managers, Warren Buffett’s record stands out as the most extraordinary. For over 40 years, Buffett’s company, Berkshire Hathaway, has earned a rate of return for his stockholders twice as large as the stock market as a whole. But that record was not achieved only by his ability to purchase “undervalued” stocks, as it is often portrayed in the press. Buffett buys companies and holds them. (He has suggested that the correct holding period for a stock is forever.)

We select our marketable equity securities in much the same way we would evaluate a business for acquisition in its entirety. We want the business to be (1) one we can understand, (2) with favorable long-term prospects, (3) operated by honest and competent people, and (4) available at a very attractive price. We ordinarily make no attempt to buy equities for anticipated favorable stock price behavior in the short term. In fact, if their business experience continues to satisfy us, we welcome lower market prices of stocks we own as an opportunity to acquire even more of a good thing at a better price. 1977

With Berkshire Hathaway’s stock, Buffett had a publicly traded corporation with captive capital.

Always remember that when you are buying a stock, you are really buying part ownership of a business.

Security Analysis” by Benjamin Graham, “The Single Best Investment” by Lowell Miller, “The Snowball Effect” by Timothy J McIntosh, “Berkshire Hathaway Letters to Shareholders” by Warren Buffett and Max Olson, “The Ultimate Dividend Playbook: Income, Insight and Independence for Today’s Investor” by Morningstar and Josh Peters.

Warren Buffett, chairman of Berkshire Hathaway and investor of legendary repute: “Most investors, both institutional and individual, will find that the best way to own common stocks is through an index fund that charges minimal fees. Those following this path are sure to beat the net results (after fees and expenses) delivered by the great majority of investment professionals.

Diversification is a way to protect financial consultants and stock brokers from ever looking really bad, but it also stops them from looking really good as well. What happens with broad diversification—holding a portfolio of, say, fifty or more different stocks—is that the winners will be canceled out by the losers, just as the losers will be canceled out by the winners. Diversification creates a situation that basically mimics the market or an index fund. An adviser who counsels diversification never looks very good or very bad, just average.

An even easier route might be to just buy some B-shares of Berkshire Hathaway (ticker: BRK-B). One share of stock in this company will cost you $203.27 today. You can then sit back and relax and let Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger, and their successors do all of the hard work.

This is why recessions destroy companies who are built solely on debt, whereas companies who maintain healthy cash reserves (like Berkshire Hathaway) can ride the wave through to the other side.

Overall, US equity investments increased four or five times on average (before taxes, investment adviser fees, and other costs), and Berkshire Hathaway advanced from $12,000 to almost $150,000, fell to $75,000 during the crisis, then rose above $200,000 per share in 2016. When the crisis of 2008 struck, equities lost half their value before rebounding. As tax receipts shriveled, the massive deficits of the US government were echoed at state and local levels. The safety of municipal bonds no longer seemed so assured. However, although they would have done better in equities, they still had enough money and, feeling safe, didn’t worry as they would have done watching the ups and downs in the value of a stock portfolio.

Our problem is that we’re ticker watchers of our own lives. Happiness (however we individually define it) is not best measured by looking at the ticker, zooming in and magnifying moment-by-moment or day-by-day movements. We would be better off thinking about our happiness as a long-term stock holding. We would do well to view our happiness through a wide-angle lens, striving for a long, sustaining upward trend in our happiness stock, so it resembles the first Berkshire Hathaway chart.

Over the past 15 years, both Internet stocks and houses have demonstrated the extraordinary excesses that can be created by combining an initially sensible thesis with well-publicized rising prices. In these bubbles, an army of originally skeptical investors succumbed to the “proof” delivered by the market, and the pool of buyers — for a time — expanded sufficiently to keep the bandwagon rolling. But bubbles blown large enough inevitably pop. And then the old proverb is confirmed once again: “What the wise man does in the beginning, the fool does in the end.

Since I entered the business world, conglomerates have enjoyed several periods of extreme popularity, the silliest of which occurred in the late 1960s. The drill for conglomerate CEOs then was simple: By personality, promotion or dubious accounting — and often by all three — these managers drove a fledgling conglomerate’s stock to, say, 20 times earnings and then issued shares as fast as possible to acquire another business selling at ten-or-so times earnings. They immediately applied “pooling” accounting to the acquisition, which — with not a dime’s worth of change in the underlying businesses — automatically increased per-share earnings, and used the rise as proof of managerial genius. They next explained to investors that this sort of talent justified the maintenance, or even the enhancement, of the acquirer’s p/e multiple. And, finally, they promised to endlessly repeat this procedure and thereby create ever-increasing per-share earnings.

If an investor’s entry point into Berkshire stock is unusually high — at a price, say, approaching double book value, which Berkshire shares have occasionally reached — it may well be many years before the investor can realize a profit. In other words, a sound investment can morph into a rash speculation if it is bought at an elevated price. Berkshire is not exempt from this truth.

Investing is an activity in which consumption today is foregone in an attempt to allow greater consumption at a later date. “Risk” is the possibility that this objective won’t be attained. By that standard, purportedly “risk-free” long-term bonds in 2012 were a far riskier investment than a long- term investment in common stocks. At that time, even a 1% annual rate of inflation between 2012 and 2017 would have decreased the purchasing-power of the government bond

THE FOLLOWING DAY, the Apple share price fell 10 percent and the company lost $75 billion in value. The single-day decline was Apple’s biggest in six years and sank its valuation to a level it had not seen since February 2017. It shook the U.S. economy. The company had become one of the most widely held institutional stocks, included in mutual funds, index funds, and 401(k)s. Thanks in part to Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway, everyone from grandmothers in Florida to autoworkers in the Midwest had an interest in Apple’s business. They all suffered.

it's rather interesting because one of the greatest economists of the world is a substantial shareholder in Berkshire Hathaway and has been from the very early days after Buffett was in control. His textbook always taught that the stock market was perfectly efficient and that nobody could beat it.But his own money went into Berkshire and made him wealthy. So, like Pascal in his famous wager, he hedged his bet.The iron rule of life is that only twenty percent of the people can be in the top fifth Is the stock market so efficient that people can't beat it? Well, the efficient market theory is obviously roughly right-meaning that markets are quite efficient and it's quite hard for anybody to beat the market by significant margins as a stock picker by just being intelligent and working in a disciplined way.Indeed, the average result has to be the average result. By definition, everybody can't beat the market.

Instead, he focuses narrowly on owning a few well-run businesses that earn attractive returns on capital and have the ability to keep reinvesting their free cash flow at high rates of return. And then he has the restraint to “leave things well alone.” He has held Markel for twenty-seven years and made more than one hundred times his money. He has owned Berkshire Hathaway for forty-two years. His largest holding, American Tower Corporation, has risen from seventy-nine cents per share to about $260 since 2002. By constructing an unhurried life in a tranquil place, Akre can “shelter” himself from the influence of other investors’ “brilliant ideas” and “stay focused completely on the things that work for us.” In essence, he’s discovered one well-stocked pond, and he’s content to fish there for the rest of his days. Or, as Akre puts it, “We can’t dance with all the ladies.” All

As he absorbs what he is hearing, David muses that just this morning he was taught that fundraising is part of the lifeblood of a private equity firm—and yet here he is working on a secret plan for a version of…immortality. Management fees without the ticking clock of a finite fund life, helping to drive the Firm’s stock price higher as the Firm’s profits increase year after year. The concept is not new; it is inspired by Berkshire Hathaway, the listed investment vehicle led by Warren Buffett. But the application to private equity firms is novel, and at this stage, none of the Firm’s rivals are focused on it.

Derivatives spread the damage throughout the world. In March 2009, when the S&P 500 had fallen 57 percent from its peak, I could not tell whether to buy stocks or to sell what I had. Either decision might have been a disaster. If we continued into a major worldwide depression, buying more would be costly. In the other scenario, the one that occurred, this was the bottom, and stocks rebounded over 70 percent in less than a year. Warren Buffett, who had better information and insight than almost anyone, later told The Wall Street Journal’s Scott Patterson that at one point he was looking into the abyss and considering the possibility that everything could go down, even Berkshire Hathaway. It was only when the US government indicated it would do whatever was necessary to bail out the financial system that he realized we were saved.

When Walter and Edwin were asked in 1989 by Outstanding Investors Digest, “How would you summarize your approach?” Edwin replied, “We try to buy stocks cheap.” So much for Modern Portfolio Theory, technical analysis, macroeconomic thoughts and complex algorithms.

Another investor I know structured his portfolio of a few million dollars to produce income at the level he wished to spend. Accordingly, his portfolio consists mostly of short- and intermediate-term bonds, on which he pays a significant income tax. Curiously, he thinks he can only spend income, in the form of dividends and interest, and he views capital appreciation as something less real. I tried, and failed, to convince him that higher total return (after tax) means more money to spend and more money to keep, no matter how it divides between realized income and unrealized capital gains or losses. To own a stock like Berkshire Hathaway, which has never paid a dividend, and therefore produces no “income,” would be unthinkable for him. This investor’s costly preference for realized income rather than total return (economic income) is common.

All things considered, the third best investment I ever made was the purchase of my home, though I would have made far more money had I instead rented and used the purchase money to buy stocks.

At Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meeting in 2013 Warren Buffett said he's own 400 to 500 stocks during his life and made most of his money on 10 of them. Charlie Munger followed up: "If you remove just a few of Berkshire's top investments, its long-term track record is pretty average.

It’s much harder to piece together every investment he’s made over his career. No one talks about the dud picks, the ugly businesses, the poor acquisitions. But they’re a big part of Buffett’s story. They are the other side of tail-driven returns. At the Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meeting in 2013 Warren Buffett said he’s owned 400 to 500 stocks during his life and made most of his money on 10 of them. Charlie Munger followed up: “If you remove just a few of Berkshire’s top investments, its long-term track record is pretty average.

Most institutional investors in the early 1970s, on the other hand, regarded business value as of only minor relevance when they were deciding the prices at which they would buy or sell. This now seems hard to believe. However, these institutions were then under the spell of academics at prestigious business schools who were preaching a newly-fashioned theory: the stock market was totally efficient, and therefore calculations of business value—and even thought, itself—were of no importance in investment activities. (We are enormously indebted to those academics: what could be more advantageous in an intellectual contest—whether it be bridge, chess, or stock selection than to have opponents who have been taught that thinking is a waste of energy?)

Focused on Princeton Newport, I lost track of Warren after 1969. Then in 1983, I heard about the remarkable growth of a company called Berkshire Hathaway. Not knowing it was to become Warren’s investment vehicle, I had stopped paying attention to it back in 1969. The stock price then was $42 a share, if you could find anyone to trade with. It was now publicly trading at over $900. I knew at once what this meant. The “cigar butt” had become a humidor of Havanas. Despite its having increased by a multiple of more than 23 in fourteen years, I made my first purchase at $982.50 a share and continued to accumulate stock.

Charlie and I believe our four criteria are essential if directors are to do their job — which, by law, is to faithfully represent owners. Yet these criteria are usually ignored. Instead, consultants and CEOs seeking board candidates will often say, “We’re looking for a woman,” or “a Hispanic,” or “someone from abroad,” or what have you. It sometimes sounds as if the mission is to stock Noah’s ark. Over the years I’ve been queried many times about potential directors and have yet to hear anyone ask, “Does he think like an intelligent owner?” The questions I instead

From peak to trough (June 1998 through March 2000), Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway fell 51% in value! During this time, I estimated that Buffett's net worth fell by more than $10 billion. How much Berkshire did Buffett sell? How much Cisco did he buy? Zero point zero. Not tempted by tech stocks, Buffett remained committed to value investing, and it paid off.1 One of the keys to successfully managing your money is to accept, like Buffett did, that there will be times when your style is out of favor or when your portfolio hits a rough patch. It's when you start to reach for opportunities that you can do serious damage to your financial well‐being.

Back in 1993, he said, "An orangutan could figure out that the stock is selling miles above the value of the company if it were liquidated. I keep telling people this, but they keep buying the stock."24