John Hjorth

Well, we know that there weren't any up to February 14, so even if they are buying hand over fist after that, the total amount for the quarter is unlikely to be impressive. Personally, I'll mentally settle with this. -What are the alternatives? 1. To lever your Berkshire position, or 2. To sell your Berkshire position [whole, or partly]. None of those alternatives have any appeal to me personally, compared to just holding on. - - - o 0 o - - - Are we getting played? [in the meaning: As continuing shareholders.] Personally, I've been through the whole emotional spectrum, from the release of the 13-F/HR to the 10-K. Today, my conclusion is, that we've not been. The whole line of Berkshire communication for the year end 2018 has to me been orchestrated to perfection, ending up with the interview with Ms. Quick early Monday morning [ pre market opening] after the release of the 2018 10-K Saturday in the weekend up to that particular Monday. Mr. Buffett has - and will always have - an informational advantage, compared to us as Berkshire shareholders.

adventurer, You'll need to study IAS 36 and its application for various industries to get the basic understanding of this accounting phenomen.

Just for information here, France already has such a thingy.

I just did a search by topic title, if this was covered already by a topic in the General Discussion forum. It does not seem to be, however specific questions related to MS Excel has been covered in a few separate topics over the years here at CoBF. This topic is not meant only for nerds, wizards & addicts [, or even some people with Microsoft certificates, paid for [most likely dearly!], and drawn in a candy- or sandworm-for-fishing-like vending machine [<- like me]] ... - Please just post! [ ; - ) ] - - - o 0 o - - - For starters, attached is an Excel Shortcuts Cheat Sheet. Excel_Shortcuts_Cheat_Sheet_-_20190302.pdf

Thank you for sharing, gfp, To me, this explains a lot of what we have discussed here on CoBF within the last two weeks about Berkshire's capital allocation. An elephant in sight, that got away, in short. Just too bad - one cannot win them all.

Carrying a post by obtuse_investor over here from the "Annual Letter 2018" topic:

aws, I'm specifically referring to the attachment in this post of mine, and to gfp's very detailed elaboration in several posts in this topic about all the details in a "safe harbour" buyback plan. To me, this can be analyzed data driven - which I have done - here, in this topic. If you look at the data, Berkshire could have bought B shares for USD 1.9 B below 205 in December 2018 [like it - at least - did in a part of October 2018]. [<- The data for what I'm writing here are in the attachment mentioned above.] Why did that not happen? To me, the answer to that is not about some "general considerations", but about data analysis, combined with straight thinking based on logic, taking existing and ruling regulation into consideration.

aws, Have you studied any of the data provided in this topic?

Post by gfp in "Annual Letter" topic just short time ago : It makes no sense to me, what has been going on with the buybacks in the days just before Christmas. B-shares - the most liquid of the two classes - were bought at an average price of 205.09 in the period October 11th - 18th, and none were bought in December, where the share price for the B went below ~205 at around December 17th, and even at few days were below 200! - - - o 0 o - - - Cash is being built up at parent company level, EOP 2018Q4 USD 26.394 B. Why? [p. K-111.] Perhaps needless to say that I'm in the same camp as alwaysinvert with regard to dividends - well, now I "said" it.

Hi gfp, You're right, actually! -Those numbers will be exactly there, in the press release tomorrow! -And then Reuters grabs them, journalists start typing, everybody copycat'ing [without reading or understanding anything else at all!], and the whole thing "explodes"! "Berkshire has burned a hole in the carpet of USD X B in fourth quarter!" Berkshire bashing and anti-hype on Bloomberg, Seeking Alpha, Twitter, in short, all over - and on CoBF likely too! I'm already getting flooded with it in my e-mail inbox, my Twitter feed and so on! -As you already said, it has buying opportunity next week for Berkshire written all over it! [ ; - ) ]

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.