No. of Recommendations: 14
It is a very close tie in this stretch: roughly a tie in terms of value creation, and roughly a tie in terms of price return.
Both picks became a little bit more expensive, but by roughly the same small amount.
The S&P has had an astounding run of profitability, and in that sense has barely become more expensive since that interview in spring 2019.
Smoothed real earnings for the S&P have been rising 5.34%/year in the last five years, the highest rate in about 65 years.
(the high rate is due to great margin improvement - real sales rose at 2.83%/year in the same stretch)
Since the interview, smoothed real earnings are up 5.8%/year plus dividends of 1.68% for value creation rate of inflation + 7.48%/year, which is historically phenomenal.
To get a sense of how fast that rise in profitability is: during the average five year stretch since 1960, the smoothed real earnings of the S&P 500 rose 2.27%/year.
Berkshire's book value rose inflation + 6.9%/year to March 2023, or about inflation + 7.8%/year to estimated June 2023, so almost exactly the same value creation rate as the S&P 500 in this stretch.
About the only excuse a Berkshire perma-bull could cite is that Berkshire's value growth rate wasn't an outlier, and the S&P's appears to have been : )
Jim
