John Hjorth

It for sure won't be pretty as almost usual tomorrow - I basically agree on that. 1 But we have to remember the reporting context, tomorrow is 10-K reporting, not 10-Q reporting. So we won't see the result for 2018Q4 - so to say - directly. [We'll have to diff with 2018Q3 income statement according to the 10-Q for that particular quarter to get the 2018Q4 result.] In short, there is USD 29.4 B after tax earnings for the first nine months, that we definitely have to remember in the whole picture for tomorrow's reporting. - - - o 0 o - - - 1. Berkshire has only had negative progress in book value per share in the years 2001 and 2008 since 1965 [minus 6.2 percent and minus 9.6 percent respectively] - and we all know why for those two years.

I may have missed that post of yours, Cardboard, I feel pretty confident, that Berkshire's portfolio returns over the last 20 years aren't that impressive, without having made any calculations. [it's the financing by float, that has done the trick, I think.]

Castanza, Not so long ago, a topic about it was started in the Stategies Forum, in this topic.

nicke, That's already discussed in depth - datadriven - in this topic.

Nicke, I have estimated, that Berkshire in 2018Q4 alone could have bought back shares - in the market alone - for as much as USD 18.6 B [2.5 x USD 7.453 B], if it wanted to. Please see attachment to this post.

Danske Bank just got kicked out of Estonia. [0_0]

Here, I'm sorry for double posting. To me, [and thereby to you, as a CoBF member], this may be a non-event, based on Dynamic's reporting about the Berkshire portfolio EOP 2018Q4. Dynamic has documented, that this is about a reduction of about 50k shares AAPL, while "The Press" talks about - and covers - something else. -In short, & frankly, it's actually not worth our time and attention. -Simply, because it does not matter for our individual investment in Berkshire in any material way. - - - o 0 o - - - The e-mail from Ms. Bosanek to Reuters has some interesting angles - by principle - however, if one thinks about it. To me, it's a tiny supplementary information, based on a situation not seen before, caused by the two of the four don't knowing exactly what the other "two"s are up two to. In short, this may likely happen again.

Personally I think that'll never happen, benny, It's not only about status of Berkshire as a bank holding company with the required regulatory reporting, but also about reporting about Berkshire subs doing business with a particular bank on arms length basis. Please try to think about the business volume of all the Berkshire subs with BAC, WFC & JPM. I don't know anything specific about it, and have no data to support my line of thinking, just here assuming it must be: "a lot".

Thank you, Spekulatius, Yes, I got scared away from INDUS Holding AG because it had "strategic considerations" about getting rid of a whole "leg" / "cluster" of subs / business unit consisting basically of vendors to the German automakers, in some way. I was surprised to read that, I did not know things were so bad right now in Germany, despite reading about Germany being recession near for the last few months. [Denmark will with certainty be hit by this in the near future, btw, because of the close German-Danish trade relations, important from a Danish perspective.] I will take a look at Dürr AG and ISRA AG at some point in time in the near future, too. -Thank you for sharing, and a privilege to have access to such information from you because of your German background.

Hilarious! - Made my day! [ : - ) ]

aws posted this in the "General News" topic: I was surprised to see the number mentioned in this post by aws for net buys. However it's true. Attached is my estimation. [EOP 2018Q3 prices used for positions liquidated in 2018Q4, EOP 2018Q4 prices for the rest.] BRK_-_Estimated_capital_allocation_in_listed_stock_investments_2018Q4_-_20190216.pdf BRK_-_Estimated_capital_allocation_in_listed_stock_investments_2018Q4_-_20190216.xlsx

Spekulatius, It's just a part of my eternal hunt for interesting stuff to study, where I'm searching for stuff on this side of the Atlantic Ocean. I think I know the European investment holding companies that I already own well enough now, after having owned them for quite some years now, to take on to expand the sphere of companies that I know about. Trackers keep my interest up, if I catch just some degree of interest. It's an eternal educational journey, and I like to do it, even if the price of the stock may not be right to me right now [here, it is so-so], because perhaps some day, it may. I looked at Indus AG not so long ago, and passed [no tracker]. I think next will be Lifco AB and Kinnevik AB, trying to learn something new and challenging the way I do things so I don't fall totally asleep and freeze without any kind of personal movement, perhaps even progress. It's great to have a reading/study backlog on companies.

Good to see you back posting, SwedishValue, Berkshire AGM 2017 transcript, afternoon session, question 2 : Pressure to deploy Berkshire's cash grows as it nears $100B So, how do you read that? -To me, it's as close to a promise as about anything said by Mr. Buffett. However, that does not change that Mr. Buffett is killing us [almost, - at least mentally] with this issue, - and we just have to live with it! - - - o 0 o - - - Source: Joel's monster Buffett compilation, p. 4,094.

Exactly. The same reason FCAU is paying a dividend rather than buying back and Exor is doing buy backs instead (partially funded with the FCAU dividend). AdjustedEarnings, wachtwoord & alwaysinvert, Your line of thinking has a lot of appeal to me personally. The "problem" [= the likelihood] for me with this is my mental anchoring in what we saw about Berkshire buybacks in 2018Q3, and the reverse engineering outcome of that, indicating a buyback threshold of ~ 209 for the B and 10 percent of the volume for the A and the B. That for 2018Q4 would give us USD ~4.2 B in buybacks for that quarter. I hope being brutally dragged out of this anchoring to "another reality" [<- your hopes!] next Friday! [ : - ) ]

CNBC [February 14th 2019] : Watch CNBC's full interview with Federal Reserve Governor Lael Brainard.

More like just back in again, Cardboard, The common denominator, I think, of the wind turbines, solar and oil is they are all generating money.

Furthermore, the 2018Q4 13-F/HR for New England Asset Management has to be taken into consideration. We'll just need to give Dynamic sufficient time to get precise and clear cut share numbers.

Yes, fingers crossed for buybacks, but I have no high hopes. We'll see next Friday.

Well, I think I got my guessing roughly right with AAPL. I'm surprised to see that so little has been added to other positions - only really meaningful addition is to JPM, but certainly a lot less than I expected. And then this further addition to BAC, where Berkshire already is fairly close to the self-imposed maximum 10 percent? Perhaps JPM is just some kind of "substitute" for forced selling of WFC, and later, but soon, also BAC. Perhaps Berkshire feels maxed out on total level with US financials? [We have to remember AXP here.]

MF.PA - Wendel SE. [Website]. Started small/tracker position.

Great analysis, Dynamic, Thank you. I just looked at the filing of the EOP 2017Q4 13-F/HR at the SEC website. That was filed on February 14th 2018, and if you look carefully at it at the SEC website, it's attributed a time stamp for acceptance : "2018-02-14 16:03:31". February 14th 2018 was a Wednesday. January in every year has the same number of days [31]. So, based on those observations, combined with the content of your last post, I will be surprised, if we don't see the 13-F/HR filing for EOP 2018Q4 after closing tomorrow.

Here Jeff's playing the first page - work in progress, I suppose - of a self-composed waltz [supposedly called "Trump Walls" [<- [ : - ) ]] on piano [<-? - I don't know the exact name of such a play-thingy - looks electrical to me].

It's not only the best one, but also the only one [to my knowledge], and thereby also both moaty and anti-goaty. [Among Danes, if you're tinkering with something, and you end up far from what you aimed to achieve [called failure, in short], it's in Danish language - among other things - called "There has gone goat into it."].

Hi Dynamic, Thank you very much for taking the time to explain this in depth and detail to an ignorant like me. Christ, this is complicated! Suddenly I really & finally realize how complicated it must be for you to maintain your file. I'll give my own file yet another spin, based on your explanations & guidance, and then post again. I'm pretty sure it'll weed out the vast majority of the variances, if not all. -Thank you!

Dynamic, Attached is my work in progress file, related to the US banks that Berkshire has positions in. Please note, that the filename contains "Draft" [ : - ) ] On the "Overview" tab I have added two temporary columns, containing the reconciliations to your file. Pink cells in variance column are those of interest. The two other tabs contains data from SEC, that have been processed this way: Brutal cut from the SEC website, From the clipboard dirty paste into Excel using special UNIcode paste [after which you have a frigging mess in Excel], Formatting the data as a table, to create the possibility to set filters [which makes the processing much easier and creates a better view for details to focus on, all non-relevant data can be hidden], Tweaking the share counts text data to numbers data, that Excel can calculate on [only share figures - I do not use the value data], & Adding conditional sums below the tables, linked to from the "Overview" tab [formula "SUM.IF"]. - - - o 0 o - - - Here are my conclusions on comparison with your file : For WFC, AXP, JPM, PNC & TRV the difference consist a separate line in the NEAM 13-F/HR, that are not included in your file. Those variances are immaterial, hvorever I ask if there is a specific reason to that those rows [marked pink in NEAM 13-F/HR tab] are omitted in your file? For USB it's about two rows - a row in the BRK 13-F/HR tab and a row in the NEAM 13-F/HR tab [also marked pink]. I haven't been able to find an explanation about the variance for BK. - - - o 0 o - - - I hope you will take the time to give those particular data in pink cells in my file a critical review, for the purpose of getting mutual better precision by collaboration - thank you in advance - and no hurry! [ : - ) ] BRK_-_Analysis_and_nitpicking_of_Berkshire_portfolio_of_US_banks_EOP_2018Q3_and_comparison_with_XLF_-_v2_-_Draft_-_20190211.xlsx