Be as clear and concise as possible in your posts, and avoid using jargon or unnecessarily complex language. Use proper spelling and grammar, and make sure that your posts are easy to understand.
- Manlobbi
Stocks A to Z / Stocks B / Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A)
No. of Recommendations: 31
1. I want to go next year. Greg was transparent, fielded about 14 questions without dodging or deflecting, and showed good, impressively detailed command of this immense apparatus. Warren is a legend and has influenced me more than anyone else in my investing career, to the point where people just wait for me to pop out a vignette about him, but he's slowed down, and frankly it was a bit painful to see him work through his part towards the top of the session. This year was an improvement over the last few years.
2. Sharing the stage was a plus. Ajit gave some interesting color commentary from his unique and very learned body of knowledge. Having Katie Farmer and Adam Johnson (BNSF CEO and Greg's successor as the non-insurance subsidiary boss, respectively) hit on a few notes. More voices keeps interest, and similarly to Ajit, they had the ability to go deeper on a couple subjects than Greg can. Such answers are less pat and more informative to the studious investor.
3. I think about 2/3 of the audience questions were from folks born in China. I simply found that interesting.
4. I too would like to see the Tokio Marine relationship continue to develop and mature. A 2.5% stake at $1.8b implies a $72b-ish valuation...I suspect this could be like an Iscar acquisition, but about 20x as large. Wow, was Iscar really 20 years ago?
5. I would love to see Berkshire investigate other very nicely valued overseas opportunities - Hyundai, anyone? (I tried, very hard, to see if there was a reasonably easy way to buy Korean tickers, but there really isn't). US markets don't provide many value plays today, in a slightly maniacal AI. world where Intel spikes 5-10% over and over despite still losing money.
6. What would impress me next year would be to have more of the CEOs of the holdings on hand. Clayton, Geico, Marmon, McLane, Pilot, a good smattering if not all of the bigger ones. Then, Greg can do an initial take on an answer, and toss to Kevin Clayton to elaborate (or offer a Charlie-esque "nothing to add").
7. The board has one too many people named Buffett on it. Pick a kid. After reading The Snowball, I hope it isn't Howard, who seems to be a bit of a wild man per Alice Schroeder's account, and not really interested in any of this. The board is still too old.
8. It was painful watching 60 and 70 year olds that aren't tech people talk about cybersecurity. As a 50something I can barely do this coherently, and it was my job for many years. Again, Greg can have Berkshire's CTO in the crowd, and punt to them like he can punt to Kevin about manufactured homes questions.
No. of Recommendations: 1
Speaking of Korean companies. Didn't WEB and Charlie love Posco? The Korean steel maker.
No. of Recommendations: 3
No. of Recommendations: 15
Speaking of Korean companies. Didn't WEB and Charlie love Posco? The Korean steel maker.
Charlie also owned the Hyundai Motor Company Preferreds (005389.KS). Since it was listed on the Korean exchange, DJCO didn't have to disclose it on its 13F-HRs. But I could deduce the investment from the foreign exchange notes in the 10-Ks that gave closing fair values. When these closing values were matched with the closing price of 005389.KS converted from South Korean won to US dollars, the progression from year-to-year over a five-year period matched exactly.
I think Charlie got the idea from Li Lu who was big into Korean preferreds during that time.
Bill
No. of Recommendations: 7
Re point #5: Korean companies
There are ways to buy Korean tickers, or at least their proxies. Sometimes Chatbot can help you locate. For example, for SK Hynix it's the HY9H GDR listed in Germany and the leveraged ETF 7709 listed in HK.
I bought HY9H 8 1/2 months ago and it's up 550%+ and doubled up 5 1/2 weeks ago and it's up 120% since then. Now my 3rd largest position.
No. of Recommendations: 0
Thanks, interesting purchase methodology. I talked to my Schwab minder when I had the idea a year or two ago and she didn’t know how to go about it, flipped me to their international desk, and he said it is a no. Didn’t seem viable on interactive brokers so I left it.
No. of Recommendations: 3
I use Schwab, Fidelity, Wells Fargo and Vanguard to spread out my accounts. I find Schwab can be more limiting than the others.
For example, years ago when I was looking to start up a self-employed 401K, Schwab had lower maximum yearly contributions than Fidelity and elsewhere. It struck me as odd since the US Government set the limits. Yet, with Schwab, there was -- I believe -- a $5K difference in one of the contributions (I'm going back 20 years or so, so I can't remember the exact layout). When I brought it up to their representatives (more than once, since I thought maybe I'd get a more informed employee at some point), it always came back as 'it is what it is.' So I went with Fidelity where the account grew into a much larger piece of my investment pie than my Schwab account, so their loss and Fidelity's gain.
SD
No. of Recommendations: 5
