Eldad

That might be worse for me personally. I holding out hope that he has something in the works. If we get to next years meeting and he says “well the cash was less of a problem at 5% but now at 3% it’s a real problem so we are hopeful the phone will ring.” I think I would have to swallow hard and prepare to pay a lot of capital gains taxes.

Not sell the Apple when you already have cash problem.

Haha you are rolling all the complainers into one. I did not complain that Apple was too big or about buying Apple. Apple basically saved BRK from its conservatism over the last 7-8 years. I went back and did the % of cash to total assets on the balance sheet going back to 1995. So if you take the average in 10 year periods it is: 1995-2004: 8% 2005-2014: 13% 2015-2024 First Half: 16% We are now sitting at 25% (and growing) which is the highest in that 30 year stretch. We had 23% in both 2004 & 2005. Just some objective numbers.

Adapt, you know? It’s not the 1970s. No one is going to call and offer you a 200 Billion business over the phone. Implement a keep your capital scheme where the business managers can get a bigger bonus if they keep and deploy their own capital at a set ROTC. Set all the great Berkshire employees loose on the cash pile. Have Ted, Todd, and Greg oversee it with the Berkshire values as the framework.

I love the stock. I love the collection of businesses. I love the values (when followed). He is handicapping himself and all of us in my opinion buy holding so much cash for this long and then he goes and makes the cash pile outrageous. He has not meaningfully bought a panic since the GFC that I can remember. He basically said himself 5 or 6 years ago it would be criminal to have that cash on the BS for this long. Follow your own rules dude or hand the keys over to Greg.

Would be great. Just not sure A. It will happen and B. He will pull the trigger if it does. At the very least he will buy some BRK but he already had plenty of cash for that.

The elephant gun was already loaded. He is doomsday prepping for the elephant apocalypse at this point.

I mean in 5 years I think it is highly likely WB is retired, they still have a cash problem, and Apple is at $350 plus. I could be wrong.

Yeah I totally get that. Why not say that if your WB? “Well tax rates are going higher blah blah blah” Need some Charlie brutal honesty following his statements.

I mean let’s be straight, why would you ever say I need to sell half my Apple because tax rates are going up? How about you never sell and never pay tax like you have preached forever? Why the weird slight dishonesties all the time?

I have a very significant portion of my families money in BRK shares. Sorry, I thought my questions were kind of the point of this website.

Ok that’s fair. What about when they cut rates and you are getting 33x on the T-Bills? The rational for BRK not paying a dividend is that they can deploy the capital better than we can. Is that still true? They can’t move the needle with the vast majority of stocks and we can. They have been hesitant lately to buy depressed markets and many of us have not, etc., etc. Many of you believe Greg is an operator more than a public company capital allocator. Will he be trying to make market beating stock purchases? If not why would he need 300 billion? WB is 94. How does that factor into the value of his cash call option?

I was just throwing it out there. I’m not trying to be mean or anything but I think it’s probably a long shot that he can deploy anywhere close to that in his remaining working life. You are going to saddle Greg with a 300B anchor on his balance sheet on day one?

My mom and dad have a good amount of oil and gas working interest. Maybe 15 years ago when people first started talking about carbon footprints my mom said “well I have a negative footprint because I supply more oil than I consume.” Hahaha I said unfortunately I don’t think that’s how it works. You are more like the drug dealer or the war profiteer in this paradigm.

Market could be anticipating a massive special dividend.

Haha you are right. It was meant to be a joke.

Do you think WB will be haunted by the Ghost of Charlie Munger, Jacob Marley style, this Christmas if AAPL continues its upward trajectory?

This is beautiful. I have the cowards version of this. 11.5% CSU, 11.25% BRK, 6% GOOGL, 6% TVK, 5.5% MKL then a lot of your smaller ones in similar sizes. Thinking strongly about taking TVK to 10% if it goes below $50 US.

Right. Gregmal, from what I can tell, is buying balance sheets mostly. I don’t really have the time and skill for that. I would rather just wait on that one bad time a year. Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Covid, beginning of 2019. It happens fairly often.

Well I guess that’s my one advantage I love it when it’s horrible.

I hear you. I’m not waiting on Apple at 10x. I spent every dime I had spring of Covid and borrowed a good amount of money to buy stocks. I get it. I think this current market is still very expensive even on a GARP basis and without discounting for a recession.

No I am not. I will pay 25x for the best. I will even pay 50-60 times for CSU or something if it is historically on the cheaper side. We aren’t there yet.

I disagree. I usually get at least once a year. By the time that happens all lot of “just pay a fair price” crowd is out of cash or scared to buy.

I am not that picky but I would at least like to pay a multiple below the average of the last few years on high quality with consistent growth before I jump for joy that the market sold off slightly. It’s just not there on what I want to buy. I don’t want Nintendo, DEO, BF, BRK for various reasons, but they are high quality.

Maybe so. I’m kind of frustrated as nothing of high quality is even really close to cheap yet.