Dynamic

I must have missed this thread before... East Sussex, South East England. ...and thanks to Liberty's suggestion I've uploaded an avatar for easy recognition.

Although I'm wary of resurrecting dead threads, I came across Howard Marks' Oakmark letter - Investing without people containing some interesting points while catching up on the Motley Fool's Berkshire Hathaway board in a post on June 19th. It really got to the heart of another distinction I probably hadn't made in disagreeing with Semper Augustus about some aspects of passive funds and ETFs causing a thinning market. Although index funds were the first passive funds and then ETFs were introduced to allow intra-day trading, not just "at close", there are now over 3,000 ETFs and they now include all manner of variations which might be considered passive or rules based investing. And of course, bonds as well as stocks can be traded via ETFs. Many of these are not broad-market index based, some are based on a sector, region or some other category determined either by a human categorising them or by a set of algorithmic rules (e.g. value or growth or importantly momentum). Some are highly leveraged, some are reverse-weighted to an index and so on. There's a lot of potential for investors to actively choose to select and ETF that matches certain characteristics or strategies then passively invest according to those rules, as long as they hold the ETF, but then to actively time their ETF buys and sells, causing inflows and outflows of money, which may seriously affect the market in the event of a market shock or panic. Oakmark's letter includes some interesting points. One of them refers to ETFs being market-traded rather than settled at the closing price for the day, so there's no guarantee that in a big shock, the buyer will be willing to pay the current net asset value, so the seller may end up with less than the index would suggest they'd get. They say there are mechanisms built in that 'should' prevent serious discrepancies, but these haven't yet been tested in extremis. Another is that deliberately selective ETFs, while being passive or mechanical in investment choice, may cause distortions and thinning of the market toward particular stocks if they should become particularly popular for inflows and outflows of funds. If there are particularly popular ETFs that hold high concentrations in FAANG stocks, for example. Thus it's important to distinguish between broad-market passive investing and narrow themed or categorised passive investing. Also the author accords with some of our opinions in this thread that in a market cap weighted passive index fund, large inflows should not disproportionately favour the firms with the higher market cap. The important distinction they make is that some ETFs are not as passive in selection as others, so inflows into those ETFs could enhance distortions. Reading Semper's letter with a distinction in mind between different kinds of passive, may change the validity of the passive versus active investing part.

I think this discussion has reached the edge of my knowledge. It's always important to look for confounding variables and it seems that everyone who has posted in this thread is doing pretty well. I think it's very likely that Charlie hasn't accounted for some socioeconomic confounding factors that may well override his conclusion - and the examples suggested, such as wealthy and well-educated adoptive parents are pretty likely candidates. In my limited experience, these socioeconomic effects seem to be larger effects than genetic ones, so much so that once controlled-for, the genetic effect strength is usually down in the noise floor of experimental error. Nonetheless it is hard to rationally consider population-level genetic differences when it gets caught up with things as emotionally charged as race and slavery and individual-level respect, achievement and opportunities. Indeed, for some countries, the history of racism and slavery could have quite plausibly generated selective pressures on the gene pools, and the effects of such policies may still linger in the socioeconomic environment long after such policies have been removed. It could be a valid question to ask whether selection - which may have both social inheritance (memetic) and biological inheritance (genetic) components - has had a role to play in the economic development of certain nations or possibly the physical characteristics of their inhabitants, but it can get very messy and hard to untangle such differences from other factors. For example, those from Europe who colonised and emigrated to various countries in the Americas, or Australia, for example would have been self-selected to some degree, but partly for different reasons. Perhaps such selection is part of the explanation of economic outcomes. Then again, so could be freedom from monarchistic power structures (whether those be state-based or religion-based). The problems arise when people switch from observations and explanations of subtle differences of how things are, into turning these things into prescriptions and plans for how things ought to be and they take these ideas too far and often use them to put down social groupings they wish to suppress, frequently in violent and inhumane ways. And idealogues can easily latch onto carefully expressed scholarly writings and cherry-pick those that led superficial support to their political power struggles and racist ideals. I can well understand that the last thing any social scientist wants is for their work to be taken up and championed by hate groups and fascists who have cherry picked the ideas that suit their objectives and pre-conceived notions and wish to persuade others and ignore all the caveats that express the limits of how far such ideas can be taken. For that reason they rationally steer well clear of such controversial areas. Charlie's more interesting point is probably memetic selection, rather than genetic. It's possible that to survive and prosper under the highly restrictive regimes of Chairman Mao and his successors, certain characteristics were selected for that can work very well in capitalism. I can imagine that a certain amount of lateral thinking could be very helpful in overcoming such restrictions and not getting into trouble with the authorities, for example, necessity being the mother of invention, and that could prove very useful in a capitalist system. It may have some side-effects, such as widespread bribery and corruption, too, but if these aren't so excessive that they break the economic engine, the ingenuity could really help them to prosper.

I have now happened across a conversation at Caltech in 2008 where he mentioned explicitly that he believes it's largely genetic and that he's observed so many instances among his friends that he thinks there's a difference. He rightly points out that many academics cannot point out that a pigmy and a zulu are different heights because it's not politically correct to say these things are genetic differences. He then goes on to say that some of the intellectual characteristics of the chinese do seem to be genetic possibly from societal genetic selection and well suited to the capitalist system. This link is 59m 13s into the video, where he goes into it after some further comments about Guns Germs & Steel by Jared Diamond. I agree that we shouldn't get too hung up on this point, but I agree that it wasn't the main thing to draw from Charlie's interview.

I got the impression that Charlie was attempting to address a Chinese audience and encourage them that a lot of culturally important Chinese values like perseverance, long attention span and pride in intellectual and skilled accomplishment are indeed very worthwhile and well prized in a market economy. I think that's an admirable message. I felt his observation about Asian immigrants and refugees bringing that culture was highly plausible. But I also felt his mention of adoption carried implicit assumption that it was genetic, when in fact it could equally be related to the adoptive parents trying to imbue some of the culture of the child's geographical and racial origin too. And it could be the result of a cognitive bias that this impression of Asian traits came to be made. From my memory Charlie didn't express an opinion as to the explanation for the anecdotal observation he mentioned. It could be that Charlie is assuming it's at least partly genetic, it could be he's being a little manipulative to his intended audience in China as an encouragement to strive to be more rational and high achieving, it could be he's providing some anecdotes about how well regarded Chinese people are in the USA but stopping short of implying that it's because of innate characteristics, though people may make the associations, whether rationally or not. It may be he is speaking off the cuff and realises mid anecdote that perhaps the adoption line is one he shouldn't explicitly tie in with the admiration of Chinese cultural traits. Given his history I'd be tempted to be charitable and assume he's rational, though even the best skeptics still make mistakes from time to time, unless more evidence convinces me otherwise in future. And even if he did show an area about which I disagree with him it wouldn't stop my admiration for him.

Actually, I think we will very probably see a pretty good Q3 from the business point of view and from the market value growth of the stock portfolio. Difficult to tell if they're finding good places to invest the excess cash. Last quarter I think they did OK, but the markets have risen substantially since late July in quite a few areas and perhaps they'd be more reluctant to load up on Apple and banks in the latter part of this quarter, though I'm sure there will be a few things to interest them. I think we might even see BVPS rise by as much as 5½-6% this quarter over 30th June's figure. That could lead to Berkshire's price increasing further, so perhaps if the price fell into the $195-$200 range, maybe even $205, Berkshire might even buy back 5-20% of the 4.1 million B-shares average daily volume to put up to $160mn per day to work (maybe 2-3 times the daily operating profits, so only slightly trimming the cash pile). This is, at best, reasoned speculation, so don't read too much into it.

I also listen to your podcast, Eric, and frankly it's the only investing podcast I have listening time to include regularly among all my science and skepticism podcasts and a couple of comedies, and I enjoy it almost always because it's very focused on different forms of Value Investing that I'd be interest to know more about and doesn't go into lots of non-value areas I don't care about, or discuss greeks and CAPM and all that crap I believe is largely irrelevant. A few questions that various interviewees might have different opinions on: 1. Do you change any aspect of your strategy, your margin or safety or your asset allocation when you feel we're at the late stages of a bull market, entering a bear market or when interest rates change greatly? 2. Do you find times when you are lacking investment opportunities, and if so, what do you do? 3. How do you think about when to exit a position on its own merits or when to switch from one investment to another? If you exit a position on its own merits, is your default holding cash or another instrument? 4. Do you employ leverage, and if so, how do you think about it? 5. Do you employ hedging, and if so, how do you think about it? 6. How do you get your news, and how do you think about it? 7. Would you care to share your Pick of the Show - an interesting resource, be it an article, book, podcast, video, or blog that has influenced you, clarified your approach or changed your views, or even something you largely disagree with that is well argued or thought-provoking? You might use these questions only when a line of conversation reaches its conclusion, pick one or two to ask everyone, or choose some at random if you end up with a large list of too many questions.

I'm not 100% sure of the reporting regulations, but I found this on Investopedia about Rule 10b-18 and it's worth following that link and reading the whole article as I provide just an excerpt below, and the article explains that Rule 10b-18 is not mandatory and merely provides conditions that would limit the potential liability against securities fraud rules, so there may be other ways to repurchase than the following and still keep the SEC happy: Speculation: I would not be surprised to see only very modest buyback activity this quarter, and not to find out about the August and September buybacks (if there have been any) until early November when the 10-Q is released. I suspect Berkshire wants this mostly as an option for future capital deployment and may use it later to prevent the cash pile exceeding the float. They will be aware that investors will be able to see the average repurchase price each month if they do conduct any repurchases and follow Rule 10b-18, so this might even encourage them to hold off this quarter or wait for a large announced negotiated repurchase from a major holder. For example, if they were to wait and then start repurchases in October, they might reveal a reduced share count towards the end of October (26th Oct, perhaps) on the front page of the 10-Q, but would not have to disclose the average purchase prices paid in October, November and December until the 10-K is released in February 2019. If they wait until after 26th October, say, they could avoid even hinting at the volume of repurchases until the 10-K is released in Feb 2019.

Both sheets now updated for the latest 13-F filings for Berkshire Hathaway and Owner 01 02 in New England Asset Management (NEAM). As always I net out holdings by pension funds to show only beneficially owned shares and I also make adjustments for known or previously declared foreign holdings believed to be held, but not required to be reported to SEC in 13-F. My holdings are thus a little different from most Berkshire portfolio updates you'll find online. The Axalta holdings in the 13-F seem no different to the 13G/A referred to above, and the pension fund holdings in that 13G/A were unchanged in total number compared to the previous quarter. As Berkshire's press release warned, some financial and airline stocks were trimmed to remain below 10% while other financials and airlines were added to during the same quarter. The estimated Apple holding (based on the 10Q's holding value divided by the closing price) was correct to 3 significant figures and does represent an increase above the 5% threshold of voting power. You can find and copy the Google Sheets as before: I removed the estimated after tax Monsanto buyout proceeds that I put in during June now that the share count is reduced to zero. The PSG holding is still there. I still include various eliminated positions on the Look-Through sheet, which come to zero. There's a summary of the changes from quarter to quarter on the tab COMBINED HOLDINGS, columns D, E and F. AAL: -5.1% of beneficially owned shares (-1,300,000 shares) presumably to stay below 10% voting power including large non-beneficial pension fund holding. AAPL: +5.1% (+12,388,244 shares) taking ownership over 5% AXTA: +4.5% (+940,000 shares) as disclosed in 13G/A (prev post) BK: +4.8% (+2,608,928 shares) % assuming none of new stake owned by pension funds. CHTR: -11.0% (-718,688 shares) % assuming none sold were pension holdings. DAL: +18.8% (+10,066,483 shares) GM: +3.1% (+1,393,611 shares) GS: +20.1% (+2,294,971 shares) JNJ: +8.7% (+28,832 shares) LBTYA: +10.5% (+1,884,592 shares) LUV: +18.6% (+8,887,943 shares) MON (Monsanto): -100% (-18,970,134 shares) due to Bayer acquisition. PSX: -27.7% (-10,960,378 shares) % assuming none sold by pension funds. TEVA: +6.7% (+2,709,585 shares) UAL: -3.9% (-1,021,421 shares) presumably to stay below 10% voting power including pension funds. USB: +10.5% (11,273,496 shares) VRSK: -14.2% (-458,692 shares) WFC: -0.5% (-2,295,019 shares) to stay below 10% to avoid bank holding co status No new positions. Only Monsanto eliminated this quarter. VRSK, while eliminated from BRK's own 13-F, was still present in NEAM 13-F [Edit: VRSK not AXTA as I previously stated in error].

There are still 2,780,136 shares of Verisk held by Berkshire care of New England Asset Management 13-F filing owner code 01 02. Including both 13-F filings, it appears to have declined by -458,692 shares, or -14.2% of the previous quarter's holding, and it just happens that all of Berkshire's direct holdings were eliminated. More to come via my Look Through Portfolio thread.

I've included some Wikipedia links which you might find will provide a fascinating rabbit hole of further links to consume a few hours of your time! Project Alpha was a giant example. A couple of young magicians (one now known as Banachek) were sent in by Randi to expose how easily fooled these PhD scientists researching parapsychology were and convinced them they possessed psychic abilities before the hoax was revealed. Another example, at the request of John Maddox, editor of Nature which has published replicated results with a large caveat, was his intervention on apparently positive homeopathy tests (water memory) at a university in France by Jacques Beneviste, which were at least partially unblinded, so the researchers interpreting microscope slides knew which samples were homeopathic and which were the controls which presumably unconsciously influenced their counting. As soon as the slides were double-blinded, the apparent effect disappeared and the result was indistinguishable from chance. I remember seeing a BBC Horizon documentary many years ago about this.

Great documentary. It was my great pleasure to meet him over a few days last year, and he's a charming and lovable man, especially in the company of fellow rationalists/skeptics. His stories are a very good warning against over-confidence in your specialist area too. So many high IQ scientists fooling themselves or being fooled by others. And the documentary has a twist in the tale towards the end. For those in the UK, the same 81 minute film was released under a different title by the BBC, where it's available for at least 2 months as Storyville - Exposed: Magicians Psychics and Frauds

I suspect they're specifically mentioning the banking and airline industries because it's those industries where some positions are close to 10% and they're simultaneously adding to some of the similar banks that are well below 10%. They know that their 13-F is widely scrutinised to garner insights into the thinking of one of the greatest investors (and two other great investors picked by him), so they're indicating that in the case of banks and airlines, they'll have sold some Wells Fargo, almost certainly, to stay below 10% as they repurchase, but may have added to Bank of America, say, or Bank of New York Mellon or an investment bank. They wish to ensure that investors and reporters do not erroneously attribute such sales to having a preference of giving any endorsement to one bank over another or one airline over another, or cause a panic sell-off in a troubled bank like Wells Fargo based on a misinterpretation, or cause a run-up in a bank being added to, which might even constitute inadvertent market manipulation and work against their self-interest as a current seller/buyer respectively. In the case of Apple, they're not near the 10% threshold and they're not investing in other similar companies, so no such buying/selling differential will be evident. I'm not sure I'll do so tomorrow 'afternoon' which is some time in the evening or night here in the UK, but I'll aim to update my public Look Through Google Sheets with both the Berkshire 13-F and the New England Asset Management 13-F, plus some other recent filings such as the 13G/A on Axalta. Until now, as we only had to wait a week or two since the Q2 financials, I decided not to update the COMBINED HOLDINGS worksheet tab with the information gleaned regarding small changes. As always, my spreadsheet will differ from those published in most places on the internet because I include New England Asset Management (thanks @globalfinancepartners) and make adjustments for some known or assumed foreign holdings that don't get reported on 13-F and also for known holdings within Berkshire's pensions funds that aren't for the benefit of shareholders.

Thanks petec for that article. UNF2007 - your input is fantastic. Applying critical thinking to such an uncertain world and trying to correctly incorporate new information into your decision making by way of the journal club is a mentally taxing thing to do right, overcoming human biases. Mind you, I think such ability can lend itself to investing.

Berkshire appears to have increased its stake in AXALTA COATINGS SYSTEMS LTD. - SEC Filing Schedule 13G/A. The beneficial ownership we count on as shareholders had been 20,940,000 shares and has increased by 940,000 to 21,880,000 shares. There are also 2,384,000 shares for the benefit of various pensions which are controlled by Berkshire but not for their economic benefit. These pension holdings are unchanged except that Berkshire has consolidated some of its pension plans (three that held 700,000 shares between them before are now in the Berkshire Hathaway Consolidated Pension Plan, which now holds those 700,000) Including these too, on the last 13-F it controlled 23,324,000 shares, now increased by 940,000 to 24,264,000, which is shown as 10.1% of the outstanding shares known on the filing date. The event that resulted in this filing was 14 days ago (10 working days) - July 26th. I guess they paid around $30 per share judging by recent price action. I will not adjust the Look-Through spreadsheet to include this until after the 13-F filing is released, and then I will link to that 13G/A filing in the worksheet 'COMBINED HOLDINGS'.

Yeah, that's another reason I think they're over 5%. It's much more speculative if you're a forced seller. The odds may be tilted in your favour if you buy well below IV, but it's still pretty speculative.

Well, the 13F is not long to wait for, then we'll have an actual share count as of 30th June 2018, filed with the SEC, instead of having to back-calculate from dividing the reported Q2 valuation of their Apple stake to the nearest $0.1bn by the presumed closing price they would have used to derive it, which is usually pretty reliable. Buffett also muttered some comments to Becky Quick in a CNBC interview prior to the Annual Meeting and Q1 financials which seemed in accordance with the current holdings according to what someone mentioned in another thread - though I haven't checked it - and thinking about it, Warren's command of the figures and instant recall is legendary, so an off-the-cuff mumbled remark is probably going to be correct in his case. I'm thinking they did and still do hold more than 5.0% and would have to tell the SEC every time their holding increases by 1% more, if I understand the rules

This sounds like a sensible initial approach to look for a number of studies on one side outweighing the few that are probably spurious or based on wishful thinking. A second or third opinion from a conventionally trained doctor or specialist can be valuable to weed out the fatal 'in my experience' phrase where such long experience is filtered badly by the statistically-poor human memory and it out-competes the body of reliable evidence based medicine in forming their clinical judgement. It's very easy to find things online that contradict your qualified medical expert's judgement, but there's an awful lot of small studies with low clinical relevance or low statistical power that may be helpful to find avenues for further research but which should have no relevance to clinical decision making or what actually happens in a complex human body as opposed to a test tube. There's also a lot of rampant pseudoscience and outright quackery online often from well meaning people taught bad science in colleges of 'natural medicine' (including herbal, homeopathy, acupuncture etc), 'traditional chinese medicine' (popularised in the 20th century when China couldn't afford enough conventional doctors), 'energy medicine' or 'chiropractic' (of which there is a wacky side that thinks chiropractic subluxations exist and are the cause of all diseases and a more sane side which only tries to treat back pain and the like in a slightly less safe way than massage and physiotherapy). A good fun and inspiring book to read is "Bad Science" by Doctor Ben Goldacre, who is involved in the international Cochrane Collaboration (which is close to the gold standard in systematic review and meta-analysis of medical research to give and update best-practice advice). This is heavily in the field of Evidence Based Medicine. He's also trying to weed out the practice of leaving research that shows no effects unpublished, which distorts the statistical evidence base on which clinicians try to make sound clinical judgements about the best treatments to use. His book Bad Pharma addresses that and he was instrumental in getting the AllTrials campaign going as well as some great evidence-based government policy initiatives. A great blog to read is Science Based Medicine (wiki). A number of world experts in various medical fields look into what works by adopting a Bayesian approach (incorporating prior plausibility as well as the strength of statistical evidence from new data, to find out what's most likely to be true. This is similar to Evidence Based Medicine but says there's little point contemplating wasting money on big studies in scientifically implausible techniques with a very weak evidence base, so it tells you where you get the best bang for your buck in research. Dr David Gorski is great, Dr Steve Novella too, and Dr Harriet Hall is another great one in that Science Based Medicine scene. All of them can be found on YouTube and podcasts giving great advice. Dr Edzard Ernst is a German physician, taught conventional medicine alongside homeopathy at medical college. He found the research by fellow homeopaths was seriously flawed and sought to produce better research to back up what his experience of patients improving seemed to show worked. He found that it was actually usually effects such as the simple time course of the complaint developing and varying that made it look like the treatment worked after being given, fooling him by chance, so he changed his opinion and started researching alternative medicine with a careful, rational, scientifically skeptical approach - don't fool yourself is the mantra! His book with Simon Singh, called Trick or Treatment? is very good and was rationally sound enough for Singh to win a famous libel case brought by the British Chiropractic Association.

My point was that they already exceeded 5% by 30th June 2018 even using the April share count published by Apple in early May, so they would have had to publish by 10th July 2018, which has been and gone. Thus I'm pretty sure they have a confidentiality waiver on the 13D filings, meaning they tell the SEC within 10 days but the SEC doesn't make it public so we can't narrow down too closely what prices they consider cheap. That's unless they somehow get to use a different Apple mark-to-market price from the closing price I found through Google Finance and Yahoo Finance for 29th June 2018. That would throw out my calculation of the minimum number of shares that would round to 47.2 billion dollars, but I've never noticed such a discrepancy before.

Thanks @SwedishValue. User @globalfinancepartners has been the member who had explained most of this to me, for which I'm very grateful and give huge credit (and surely owe them a beer or two if we should ever meet!), so I posted this with the thought that any nuance I've misunderstood will be corrected by peer-review and we'll all learn something.

A few minor changes just made updating Berkshire BV/share and share count. Nothing significant unless you want to monitor the current Price-to-Book Value ratio in cells X3 and X4. The spreadsheet does NOT include the latest estimated Apple holding (up about 2% in share count) as the 13-F is soon due for release and it can be updated then to a more exact figure rather than mess with the established adjustment for pension scheme holdings. If you wish to account for changes to Apple and Wells Fargo, you can make a copy on your own Google Drive and easily add or subtract from the formula in the Adjustment column in tab "Combined Holdings". This sheet also includes MON (Monsanto) with a estimate of the after-tax proceeds from its takeover. This cash and tax should be in Berkshire's quarterly financials so I'll remove the Monsanto proceeds when updating after the 13-F is released in a week or two.

I have recently had suspicions that a few more AAPL may have been purchased by Berkshire in the $162-$165 range at the end of April, but the run-up to $183-$194 ballpark since then may have curtailed their buying. Roughly 200 milion shares of AAPL traded in that April low period, so I would not have been shocked to find they've added another 50-60 million shares. On the latest Apple 10-Q we have the figure: , which remains the latest published figure for outstanding shares. Now it appears that 5% reporting threshold would currently be 245,756,900 shares. Berkshire's 13-F holdings (Berkshire and New England Asset Management combined) as of 31st March including pension fund holdings are: 245,278,633 (4.990% of last known shares outstanding). This is remarkably close to a threshold that wouldn't have been precisely known to Berkshire prior to 20th April. Can that be coincidence? We believe that 2,837,753 shares are owned by pension schemes within Berkshire (per 10-K annual report). (0.058% of AAPL) From the financial-benefit definition of beneficially owned, Berkshire has 242,440,880 (4.933% of AAPL), excluding the pension scheme holdings that are not for the financial benefit of Berkshire's owners. But from the voting power definition of beneficially owned, it's the 4.990% known directly from the two 13-F filings that counts. I assume from the 4.990% being just below 5.000% that it may be the latter that would trigger the 13D and that this threshold is what curtailed Berkshire's buying in the first quarter to avoid reporting responsibilities. It is even possible, perhaps likely, that Berkshire may engage in slight trimming this quarter at the $180+ range to avoid 13D filing responsibilities that might arise the moment that Apple next makes a filing that discloses a reduced number of shares outstanding. In this way, Apple, like Wells Fargo, may well then remain at about this size, with Berkshire estimating the extent of Apple buybacks and trimming slightly from quarter to quarter, unless the SEC is willing to grant them an exemption from public filing within 10 days until they hit a higher limit such as 10%. I imagine such an exemption is possible, because I don't recall 13D filings about the 0.4% Wells Fargo position trimming appearing prior to the release of the 13-F this quarter, and this trimming ws to keep Berkshire just below the 10% level to avoid being considered a Bank Holding Company, which is, of course, well above the 5% 13D threshold. If they are allowed exemption from public filing of 13D while they build their position. From the Berkshire 2018Q2 quarterly report, they beneficially hold $47.2bn as of 30th June 2018. The pension scheme holdings wouldn't be included there but will appear in the 13-F later this month. The lowest number that would round up to that figure is $47.15bn. The Apple share price at the close on 29th June - the last trading day - was $185.11 So the smallest share count that fits would be 254,713,414 shares of Apple held by Berkshire, an increase of at minimum 9,434,781 shares over 31/03/2018. As a percentage of Apple's then published 4,915,138,000 shares outstanding (as of their May 10Q), this is 5.18% at a minimum based on the known share count at the time (which has since decreased, increasing Berkshire's percentage ownership of Apple). So this exceeds the 5% threshold where Berkshire must file a Schedule 13D filing with the SEC. From this I think we can assume that Berkshire has been granted confidential filing status for Schedule 13D at this point while they continue to add to their position, so their public holdings will only be released in their 13-F filing later this month and there will be less indication of the price range they've bought at than during a 10-day period. Otherwise, had the 13D filing been made public we'd have known within 10 days of any increase above 5% during the quarter, meaning at latest 10th July if they'd bought off market on 30th June. This confidential status seems entirely fair given Berkshire's proprietary view of Apple's valuation which is a competitive advantage. Berkshire clearly doesn't wish to conduct a takeover of Apple or exercise control over it, and the SEC's requirement relates to monitoring of voting power, not publicly disclosing the prices and quantities traded by those they regulate and giving away such proprietary judgement clues to the investment community at large. Perhaps we can then envisage that Berkshire could continue to buy beyond 5% when Apple is priced attractively, and could probably get close to 10% before hitting the requirements that caused them to trim their Phillips 66 (PSX) stake, even though, like Apple it's not a bank, so wouldn't cause Berkshire to be considered a bank holding company as a 10% holding in Wells Fargo would. Possibly even over 10%, it might be worth whatever those requirements are, given that Apple is one of the few investees that can really move the needle given Berkshire's size. That potentially could mean that in future, rather than the Apple stake representing about 9-10% of Berkshire's market cap, it could rise a lot further. I haven't yet updated my public Look Through Google Sheet, as we only have an estimated Apple holding and the share count has only risen by 2% last quarter. It won't be too long until the 13-F is released and I will update it more fully.

Thanks @racemize. That looks very useful. I note that Google Finance is currently working for .INX and SP500TR but odd things go awry from time to time and a backup is very useful. Perhaps an IFERROR function would be good to use the script (which I imagine isn't going to be as fast as GOOGLEFINANCE) whenever GOOGLEFINANCE returns an error message. It would then say Loading... for a few moments until the AlphaVantage script has finished fetching the data.

Bought and sold some BRYN (Berkshire Hathaway Class B, BRK.B, traded in Germany & denominated in EURO) as a day trade using a little margin. I won't be making a habit of day trading, but I was pretty sure it was mispriced and due for a rally to at least $205 and would have been happy to hold at my buy price anyway. Seemed too cheap early on given that earnings beating estimates by quite a margin so I bought at €175.49 ($202 and sold once US markets opened and rallied at €178.82 (something close to $206.75 USD) well before the German markets close so I wouldn't carry the margin overnight. Commissions 0.1% each side, so gained about €2.98 per share net. Commissions are quite a large part of gains when day trading, but happy enough with the trade even if I left some further gains on the table. Having closed that trade I still have a very full position in BRK.B, and have a heck of a lot more unrealised gains than realised gains today. Great time to be very long Berkshire, though I'd be happy to see the price fall when I'm ready to buy more, of course.

I hope I'm not going too far off-topic, but here goes anyway. John, when I first bought BRK.B (the pre-split stock) in 2003 in my tax-free ISA, I had to place the order by phone with a broker in Frankfurt and I used some numeric code supplied by my broker's customer services for the stock identification (about 10 digits). Since then I've been able to trade online and it does seem to actually be the BRK.B stock they hold and I can only trade during NYSE hours but I can only hold GBP cash in an ISA so my trades execute through a London Stock Exchange system, where it includes the currency conversion. The broker only updates US stocks in my Account Valuation screen about once or twice a month at the close, so I use a Google Sheet to track my positions and current valuations more accurately. @PeteC, I used interactivebrokers.co.uk (the UK subsidiary of Interactive Brokers, regulated by the FCA) to buy BRYN this morning, an account I've only had open for a couple of months. Now the pre-market in the US and the BRYN price are roughly the same, when converted to USD, but I think the volume in US pre-trading is higher than on XETRA. Previously I only ever bought BRYN in a dummy "Paper Trading" account they let you try out with $1 million USD notional cash balance to play with. With the low volumes and my stingy limit order I only got filled for 2 shares of BRYN (notionally) and ended up getting about 10,000 shares of BRK.B (notionally) gradually later in the day once the US markets opened! I was experimenting with margin to see if I understood how it worked, and sure enough they started selling out my notional positions towards the end of the trading session to bring it in line with overnight margin, where you can borrow up to 50% of the market value of your stocks. The platform seems to be very powerful for professional users and people with fancy day trading strategies, forex trades and even some algorithmic strategies, and I'm sure I won't use 90% of the features available. It's certainly worth checking out their trial account to see what you can do and then you can think about setting up a real account if you're really sure you can manage the risks. For your real money account you can pre-select which markets you allow in the account and what types of instruments and whether you will allow margin. Certain instruments are only available to advanced traders with sufficient experience or who pass a test. I might like to sell some out of the money put options to either earn income or to enter positions (if I'm put to) at a price I find attractive, much like @boilermaker does, so I had to pass an online multiple choice test about options trading when setting up the account. I probably could have told them I had more experience than I really did and avoided the test, but it was interesting, even if most of it seemed too much like day-trading and technical analysis chartism to me and required Googling once or twice so I really understood the concepts and could work out the correct answer. I have never actually bought or sold BRKB.MX but I've just successfully placed a DAY Limit order at 3,805.00 MXN in the "Paper Trading" account (a few options appear when you type BRK B with a space, not a period, into the Interactive Brokers ticker search box) to be notionally submitted at market open, so it seems to work. I had previously been almost exclusively using ISA accounts for myself and my spouse, which are exempt from Capital Gains Tax so no reason to switch tickers for the same stock. Another way to avoid capital gains tax if you live in the UK or Ireland is through very careful use of DFT (Spread Bets) - read this post on 'Getting leverage' and those below for a story of what crazy and dangerous leverage you can obtain there - using a dummy trading account only. It turns out the CFDs offer similar leverage to DFTs but they are subject to UK Capital Gains Tax and they are available outside the UK and Ireland (except perhaps US and Canada, but possibly available routed via IBKR UK). The important thing is to fully understand the effective leverage you're taking on so you don't get wiped out or even owe more money than is in your account. The nice thing about UK Capital Gains Tax is that you get £11,700 of gains per person exempt from CGT this tax year, then for lower-rate taxpayers it's only 10% tax on the gains above the exemption until they push you into the higher rate band, then it's 20% tax on gains for higher rate tax payers. So even if you do pay some tax on some extraordinary gains, its about half the rate of income tax and with no National Insurance Contributions to be paid like in your employment. An ISA is even better and is the mainstay of our portfolio of long-term holdings, except for the restrictions on the types of instruments and the amount you can contribute each year being limited to £20,000.