No. of Recommendations: 34
Inflation-adjusted price of Berkshire, log scale, with various valuation yardsticks shown.
www.stonewellfunds.com/FairValueChart2023-Q3.png
The little spot-in-a-square represents the market close Nov 3. The current valuation level seems to be a bit higher than the post-credit-crunch usual, but also cheaper than most estimates of actual fair value.
The "consensus value" metric is a mix of my "two and a half column" value metric, book per share, and peak-to-date book per share.
The "two and a half column" value per share metric is up inflation+6.0% compared to a year ago, and up inflation + 5.4%/year compared to FY 2019.
For the first time I have put in modest upwards cyclical adjustments for the railroads and utilities, as described here
https://www.shrewdm.com/MB?pid=620140634I haven't bumped up my estimate of their earnings power to recent inflation-adjusted peak levels, but I have bumped them up to recent inflation-adjusted
lowest levels.
Based on that consensus valuation metric, and the observed relationship between that and market price in recent years, and assuming that both valuation growth and market multiples resemble the last 15 years or so, the "usual" one year forward price return from here might be estimated as inflation + 3.6%. That will be wrong, but the notion is that it's a 50/50 chance of being too high or too low. The various models I use give one year expectations in the range inflation - 0.1% to inflation + 6.4%.
These are modest numbers because, as noted, the current price seems to be a slightly higher than average market multiple, even if it's not overvalued.
Jim
