Subject: Re: Berkshire should have borrowed more
I get your point. It was in 2020, at the start of the pandemic, after he released his 2019 Annual Report, that Warren Buffett was on CNBC. He mentioned that it was stupid to be buying bonds at that point, because the 10-year rate was 1.8%, and you'd pay taxes on that, but the fed's inflation goal was 2%, so you'd lose purchasing power.
But if what you want is to borrow in order to buy Berkshire shares, you'll first need to convince Warren Buffett that there is enough transaction volume of the shares on the NYSE to allow him to buy more than he already does, because he's made it quite clear that is the reason for not purchasing more Berkshire shares. He spoke about it at the 2022 annual meeting:
"Charlie I think spoke the other day and I explained henry singleton -- uh i think he bought back 89 percent of the company over time and he sold stock like crazy or issued it much earlier when it was overpriced and they bought it back under priced --
but the key to that of course is having people think you're wrong in doing it so he was able to buy a ton of it and there's some other companies that have bought a ton of it. Berkshire isn't going to get the chance to do that because if people think we're buying then... we've got sensible shareholders that's what it amounts to. If we had the same group of shareholders that own two-day puts [referencing the situation Occidental had] and they were our shareholders we'd buy back the whole company you know and in a very short period of time."
It's worth repeating:
"If we had the same group of shareholders that own two-day puts and they were our shareholders we'd buy back the whole company you know and in a very short period of time."
It believe it was in the 2020 interview that said he was able to purchase such a large stake of Apple for Berkshire at the same time Apple was repurchasing their own shares because it too has a large volume. And that volume is missing from Berkshire.