No. of Recommendations: 0
BRKA's share price is down 4% today, with the broad market flat. Of course this is just a knee jerk to Warren's announcement of his retirement, but in my biased mind IV may just have dropped 4% as well. With no disrespect to Greg Abel, IV depends on future BV growth, and no one is as good at growing BV and IV as Warren.
I agree, 4% seems quite reasonable, (although the number is now 5%), and maybe it should have fallen more.
The company will do fine, with its subsidiaries generally safe companies operating reasonably well, and a ton of cash as optionality. However, that optionality just took a big drop in value. We all knew that Buffett would be handing over the CEO job to Abel in the next 2-3 years, but now it is done (at least as of Dec 31st) and that $300b in optionality is now much more likely to be used by Abel rather than Buffett. I susspect that the fact that Buffett has decided to pass the reins is because he feels he is already not functioning as well as before. While I think Abel will be an excellent operations manager, I have no way of knowing whether he will be a great capital allocator, and it is virtually certain that he will not be as good as the greatest capital allocator we have known.
I sold my shares at around $425, and I would like to reestablish a small position in Berkshire eventually, but I am in no hurry, with just a 5% discount from a price which at $500/B-share is still up more than 25% in the last year, from levels that were already higher than the historical norm.
DTB
