73 Reds

@Buckeye I think the notion of "creating your own dividend" by selling shares misses the point altogether. First of all, anyone can do this with any stock but hardly anyone does. The reason is that for most people, stock ownership is a purely passive activity. Ask yourself how many people would own almost any dividend-paying stocks but not for the dividend. Which brings us to precisely the issue; that being demand for the stock. The demand for Berkshire shares during Buffett's tenure has been almost entirely and directly due to Buffett. Now what after he is gone? His successor is taking over a company with almost no investment opportunities if he sticks to all the investing principles that Buffett has espoused. How does anyone predict success? Why would anyone who does not currently own shares now be interested in becoming a shareholder? These are ripe issues for discussion now that Buffett is weeks away from stepping down.

I've discussed a few suggestions up-thread, i.e. at least some excess cash could be invested in SPY(or its equivalent) at appropriate valuations. The topic of a dividend got me to thinking; could a dividend be declared only for B shares? As a holder of both As and Bs, the proportion of B shares to A shares could be adjusted by each dividend and you'd get the advantage of a whole new class of B-share shareholders.

Well, the irony is Buffett and Charlie talked about eventually having to pay a dividend many years back if a certain 5-year return threshold was not met. I forget the precise details but piling into T-Bills year after year waiting for either a downturn of epic proportions or a gratuitous business owner were not the only investment alternatives available at that time. To GFP's point, any hint of a dividend by the BOD would certainly be discussed and cleared with Buffett in advance.

Couldn't read the article (paywall) but your points are valid. Re: a dividend, how many more times and ways does Buffett have to tell us that his investment options are limited? If so, isn't that the reason for a dividend? It also creates demand for the stock; anyone have a problem with that? As a 40+ year shareholder I've never wanted a dividend and if new management changes its tune about lack of feasible investments I still don't want one. Otherwise, a dividend is better than the return on T-Bills.

For my $, the equity portfolio remains very much a mixed bag and the weakest of their various income streams. In any event, I don't understand the tiny positions.

Sweet, nothing should be released into the public realm that may wrongfully incriminate innocent people and drag their names and reputations through the mud for the sake of appeasing crazy leftists that are never satisfied anyway. dwy000 clearly needs help. I'll do my part and not engage him further on this issue.

@Sweet Of course there is public interest! But the potential harm to innocents vastly outweighs any benefit of releasing hoards of documents, etc.. without ensuring that innocents will not be affected. That is why anything found must be thoroughly investigated, scrutinized, authenticated and essentially proven to be accurate before being released.

There is no reason to make the files public in a case like this if innocent people can be hurt. And any innocent people will most definitely be hurt if their names are associated with Epstein.

Releasing files doesn't prove anything. You're an intelligent person but remarkably naive about our legal system and the consequences of being wrongfully accused of something you didn't do. Like any other crime, the guilty can be charged and convicted without the scrutiny of the public at large.

No, its not all right to think like you do. Glad to have fleshed out that guilt by association is perfectly acceptable and innocent people are really not innocent unless they prove it. There are places in the World where such an ideology fits right in.

You don't get it. At all. No one should have to prove their innocence for the sake of crazies like you. In fact it's comments like this that make me fear for our future.

The idiocy of all this is Epstein made a lot of money and ran in big circles. Names of such individuals who were business associates, clients or others who are completely innocent of any wrongdoing are as (or more) likely to be in any "files" as the names of any wrongdoers.

Who said anything about not wanting to prosecute guilty parties? That is an entirely different issue than releasing files.

LOL, how can someone who is so good at financial analysis be completely blinded by TDS?

"Best friends" don't get thrown out of his club. That aside, IIRC, the Republicans did campaign on releasing the "Epstein files" which I disagree with for the following reasons: Just what are these "files" and what do they consist of? Where did they come from? Have they been reviewed and investigated for veracity, authenticity and truthfulness of whatever information may be found? Just because records of any kind happen to be in the possession of a vile human being doesn't make them trustworthy or even material to anything. My fear is innocent names may very well appear in many different contexts and disgorging volumes of who knows what into the public realm encourages an entirely untrustworthy media, social media and anyone who can read to cause great harm to innocent people's lives and reputations. Yeah, the media has never been known to take something out of context, LOL. In short, it would be reckless to release any such "files" without a heavy dose of scrutiny in advance.

Agreed, but were you making these same demands prior to Trump's re-election? If not, what changed?

<<Getting both #2 and #3 right is really hard. This is perhaps part of the reason why Philip Fisher said you NEVER sell a compounding machine when they when you have found one - regardless of what the valuation is.>> Yup. The way to make it easy is to hold long-term compounders and the stocks you like most in taxable accounts.

You mean the democrats during Biden's tenure? Their renewed interest now is quite a spectacle.

Far more entertaining to me than whatever is there are the MOTIVES of the people demanding release of any Epstein materials.

LOL, don't quit your day job (unless it is in money management).

International could be great. There are talented investors all across the globe; why not put some of them on Berkshire's payroll? But there are other workable ways to increase performance. One thing I am yet to understand is that Buffett long ago advised his surviving spouse to invest 90% of her inheritance in an S&P 500 index fund (the remaining 10% in bonds). If SPY is desirable for his spouse - even more than Berkshire itself - why is it not OK for Berkshire's excess cash? Even so, there are many large public companies that may not be world-beaters but generate consistent profits that are better than cash. $10 billion here and $10 billion there eventually start to add up.

Yeah, and the problem with simply continuing the recent past is there is no catalyst. We can probably all agree that cumulatively Berkshire's businesses are moderately better than average. However, without consistent new and meaningful investments the company leans more toward the value of cash and further away from "moderately better than average". Share buybacks can only take them so far and can't be the only reason to buy the stock. If we are truly stuck in a holding pattern, as much as I don't want or need a dividend, it may be necessary. Otherwise Berkshire is very likely to trade closer and closer to BV.

What I mean by that is Greg is not Buffett. He does not possess the same capabilities and he is not starting off from a small base with lots of investment opportunities. Buffett treated Berkshire as an empire to be built to the sky. Well, its there now and the view from above is not terribly exciting. If we are in a permanent or semi-permanent period of low interest rates, should we question just how valuable the insurance operation is on a going basis? Hundreds of billions of dollars of float are wonderful but what can Berkshire do with it in its present iteration? T-bills? IMO Ted's and Todd's true talents (Geico aside) are being wasted.

That is the part that is confusing. Greg needs to have the authority and autonomy to act differently and perhaps go against what has been perceived as the Berkshire culture during Buffett's tenure.

The A shares are tightly held directly because of Buffett. But if he tries to hamstring Greg by imposing conditions, restrictions and limitations as to how to create shareholder value, shareholders will not be particularly happy and will ultimately vote with their pocket books.