Halls of Shrewd'm / US Policy
No. of Recommendations: 4
“ The total value of the five Japanese "trading houses" in Berkshire Hathaway's equity portfolio has topped $30 billion in recent weeks, and Warren Buffett is apparently still buying.”
https://link.cnbc.com/public/41956735
No. of Recommendations: 3
A number of months ago, I sold half my holdings of Berkshire Hathaway and arbitrarily split it in purchasing shares of thee five Japanese companies (through IB, in Tokyo). To put it mildly, they have all outperformed BRK by a significant amount. Buffet is a great stock-picker, but that doesn't mean that all of the assets held by BRK offer the same characteristics and the company currently has a lot of inertia because of its pile of cash.
Jeff
No. of Recommendations: 0
arbitrarily split it in purchasing shares of thee five Japanese companies (through IB, in Tokyo)
I wanted to do something similar, but most of my funds are locked up in Vanguard retirement accounts, and they don’t have access to international markets. I know Berkshire borrowed in Yen to make these investments currency neutral, but I somewhat expect the Yen to outperform the Dollar for the next 2-3 years. I ended up buying an ETF, EWJV that holds Tokyo-listed value stocks. It’s done alright in the last few months
No. of Recommendations: 4
A number of months ago, I sold half my holdings of Berkshire Hathaway and arbitrarily split it in purchasing shares of thee five Japanese companies (through IB, in Tokyo). To put it mildly, they have all outperformed BRK by a significant amount.
That could have been my post. I bought 3 of the 5 in mid-May, through Interactive Brokers, using Yen I didn't have, so I have an equivalent negative position in JPY, making me ambivalent about currency movements. I bought the 3 that were selling for the lowest multiples (between 8 and 10 at the time). I sold one of them yesterday, and still hold the other two, for an average gain of 28.5%, or 30%, including dividends. I bought them largely because I figured if Buffett was increasing his positions last quarter, with P/E ratios between 10 and 14, he must have felt they were still a good deal. They are up 5-10% since then but they are probably still a pretty good deal, with slowly growing revenue and earnings, and multiples we don't often see on this side of the big pond.
dtb
No. of Recommendations: 8
With the possible exception of Toyota, nearly everything that Japan exports gets "touched" by one of these companies in one fashion or another. They own substantial parts of everything from electronic firms (Sumitomo owns a large portion of NEC, for example) to ship building companies (Mitsubishi owns one and it builds ships for Mitsui's cargo and passenger cruise lines).
Jeff
