JPerez

According to the filing after his latest philanthropic donations Warren Buffett's stake in Berkshire is down to 238626.6 class A equivalent shares which represents a 15.8% economic interest. So if my math is correct outstanding A equivalent shares as per today are between 1515000 and 1505000. There were 1525655 the 31st of march. So they have repurchased between 20000 and 10000. So that is between 4.15 and 8.3 billion. So it looks like buybacks are continuing at a decent clip despite the higher prices

It is actually just 6B in total adding the stakes in the 5 companies. It is not a significant investment by any extend of the imagination. I haven't look at these companies yet, but there is no need to panic ;)

They are counting the 80 million warrants as shares for ownership purposes. If you take that away it looks like they owned 0 shares other than the 11 million they got as a dividend earlier. So nowhere near the 10%. They might owned oxy shares in other entities that are not listed in the prospectus.

I thought about shorting it but in this market I am afraid to short even when, like on this case, on the face of it is overwhelmingly rational thing to do.

$D going up 10% in premarket. Dominion has a 70 billion market cap and 37 billion in debt so a 107 billion EV utility increasing its value 7 billion on the news that they are selling a quarter of their cash flow for 10 billion. This market is really something else. I get that the regulated utility cash flows are worth more than the pipeline ones and 0% rates and all the rest but a well over 100 billion EV for a utility with 3 billion in adjusted earnings?

I think the reason why he is so cautious is because, as he said, the range of outcomes in the pandemic is so wide. He has lived through many recessions in his live and despite the differences they all have many things in common and I am sure He has developed a mental model to apply to recessions so He is comfortable buying stocks during those times. This case is different, this situation is new for all of us, nobody has any experience living through this and nobody know what the consequences will be. The way he has built his wealth and Berkshire is betting on companies that will do well but most importantly that have no risk, in his mind, to become worthless. He has repeatedly said he would never invest in a share that could be a 10 bagger if there is any small chance that it could be a zero. That is why he doesn't invest in technology, before he invests in a company he has to visualize and become comfortable with how the company would look in 5 or 10 years and that is very difficult to do with technology companies. What is the upside of going all in in the march low? A few extra points of performance for the next few years? What was the downside if the pandemic was worse or if the Fed wouldn't have acted the way it did? Even now though the range of outcomes is narrowing, still there are lots of unknowns. And spend your cash doesn't seem to me like the best idea. What if the vaccines don't work, what if the government reduce the stimulus? Both are unlikely but there isn't a zero chance of them On the other hand I find ridiculous all the bashing of Buffett and Berkshire over the recent months because of the underperformance. Has Berkshire underperformed the S&P 500, not to talk about the Nasdaq over the last 5 and 10 years by a good margin? Obviously yes but consider this. At the top of the last cycle (December of 2007) Berkshire book value was 78000 per A share at the end of December 2019 it was 262000, more than tripled over 12 years. How is that a bad outcome? We can also compare what their cash, securities, earnings power was then and now and in my opinion Berkshire has done an excellent job in the last decade at growing intrinsic value taking very few risks. By the way the share price has gone from150000 at the end of 07 to 337000 at the end of 2019. So the multiple for Berkshire is lower while the multiple of the market as a whole has gone up substantially hence the underperformance. Going forward I think they will outperform the index, not because they will have crazy returns but because I think it is hard to see the market going up 8% a year in the next decade while it is easier to see that kind of compounding from Berkshire. The only things that bothers me a little about the way the company is managed is that I don't think they will do substantial buybacks while Buffett is managing it (I hope I am wrong). I think he is a collector of businesses and I don't think he wants to erode his capital base in any substantial manner so that he can acquire big companies when the opportunity arises. I think he would love for Berkshire to be the biggest company in the world and that could blind him and reduce the buybacks even when they would make sense

Total deaths in Spain for March were about double the deaths expected during that month. A lot of the deaths happened in nursing homes.

I think the market is just obsessed with revenue growth these days just because it is so hard to find in this low inflation, slow economy environment. There are lots of examples of stocks I would consider overvalue in that space netflix, amazon, linkedin,etc. Their market price is entirely based on their sales not their earnings and that creates perverse incentives for management. I don't short stocks because it is so depending on the timing and I find it extremely difficult to be right at the right time but my favorite to short in this category would CRM, they are just so grossly overvalued that it is scary. But i Thought that last year and they are much higher now.