The whole Buffett process depends upon generating capital to deploy. Buffett did a good job of the former. He hasn't done a good job of the latter in many years, putting all his chips on his belief that the market will ultimately offer the opportunity to do so at cheap prices.

This.

Warren was always of the “bargain hunt” mindset, even in the earliest era before Charlie brought him around to the “good business at a fair price” era which lasted most of his life. (I say this perhaps with prejudice, because my wife has the same mindset. She will not buy something she wants until she gets “a deal” on it, and I have seen more cases of regret - later - because she didn’t buy what she truly wanted. But then the seller had another idea, and that’s what makes a market.)

So perhaps I am a bit jaded, but there have been lots of things for sale across the last decade or two at “fair” prices, and I’m not even counting the sorts of things which Warren eschewed because of “tech” or “circle of competence” or whatever: things like Google, Amazon, et al.

When you’re on the hunt for the elephant, if there are no elephants, maybe it’s time to change locations, change targets, or change the way of thinking.

I don’t mean to criticize Warren, his stock has been very good to me. But I also think it’s a bit early to jump on Greg, given the situation he’s been handed at a somewhat inauspicious time and a corporate culture that marks entire swaths of possibilities as “off limits.”