Dynamic

I believe (please correct me if I'm wrong) that the Berkshire interest in Kraft Heinz Co. (KHC) is consolidated in Berkshire's earnings statement, so it would be double-counting to include its Look-Through earnings of almost $0.44 per year per Berkshire Class B share, in the Look-Through Portfolio EPS calculations (in column AH) as they're already included in Berkshire's GAAP EPS and Operating earnings (those being earnings before the mark-to-market adjustments that now must be carried into the income statement, but which Berkshire presents alongside the new GAAP figure for consistency and comparison with past performance). I also presume that the mark-to-market 'earnings' from changes in the stock portfolio market value would specifically exclude the market-value change of KHC, this being considered a consolidated subsidiary entity. You can find and copy the Google Sheets as before: Caution: Note that EPS figures for portfolio components taken from Google Finance may include historic figures over the most recently filed 4 quarters with a mixture of US tax-rates assumed (e.g. old 35% federal rate and new 21% federal rate), so EPS shown may be materially below EPS by end of 2018. The results include, at about 09:00 EDT on 3rd July: Market Value of Look-Through Portfolio except KHC = $72.31 per BRK.B share. EPS of Look-Through Portfolio = $3.7860 per BRK.B share (excluding KHC, which earned $0.4379 per BRK.B) P/E ratio of portfolio = 72.31/3.7860 = 19.1. Earnings yield = 5.2% Market Value of remainder of BRK.B (including cash) = $115.52 per BRK.B share (at 2nd July 2018 closing price of $187.83) EPS less portfolio dividends for Operating part of Berkshire = $3.2229 per BRK.B share Look-Through P/E ratio of Operating part = 115.52/3.2229 = 35.8. Earnings yield = 2.8% From 2018Q1 10-Q p6: Cash and cash equivalents and restricted cash at end of first quarter = $58,374mn Therefore Cash per class B share = $58,374mn/2,467.6mn = $23.66 per BRK.B Market Value of Operating part of BRK.B less cash per share = $91.86 P/E ratio of same = 28.5. Earnings yield of same = 3.5% Total Look Through Earnings Per Share of BRK.B = $7.0089 per BRK.B share Look-Through P/E ratio = $187.83 / $7.0089 = 26.8. Earnings yield = 3.7% Look-Through P/E net of cash* = $164.17 / $7.0089 = 23.4. Earnings yield = 4.3%. *This assumes cash is taken at face value. If cash is used to fund undervalued acquisitions or purchase undervalued stock, it may have higher ultimate value (optionality premium). If you are comparing Berkshire to alternative investments without 'cash drag' you might wish to discount its value. There's also some additional cash included in the look-through sheet, such as the estimated after-tax proceeds of the Monsanto acquisition by Bayer, which will show up in the Q2 financials released in early August 2018. The USG acquisition will eventually add to the cash position also. Some of this, however, might have been invested in the mean time, for which we'll await the 13-F filings later in August. I'd anticipate the Look-Through EPS and Book Value Per Share are both likely to compound at around 10% cagr (8-12% range) in the long term (6-9% above inflation) regardless of the cash build up at this point in the cycle, but your mileage may vary. Miscellaneous Adjustments to the Spreadsheet - feel free to ignore these I've altered a few of the columns around columns AE and AF. Column AE is now for EPS including KHC, and AF is now the EPS excluding KHC column. The green shaded columns AH and AI are those I consider 'correct' for calculating look-through earnings as they exclude KHC. The sheet carries through the totals of these columns at the foot of the page into the Look Through Market Value (copied to cell D7) and the Look Through EPS of the portfolio in cell S7. The Total EPS in S9 is the sum of this figure plus the operating earnings of Berkshire (including its share of KHC), less the dividends received from the stock portfolio (these dividends, shown in the financial statements should not include dividends from KHC as these are considered distributions from a consolidated subsidiary, I believe, so I don't need to adjust further) The blue text on a pink (light red) background includes KHC. You might want to know these figures for some specific purposes of your own, but as KHC is consolidated, they don't now find their way into cells D7 or S7. I also made a few improvements to the robustness of the sheet possibly to do with the update going on with Google Finance, which sometimes throws up error messages that it used not to, and which may also speed up the calculations by reducing unnecessary GOOGLEFINANCE() queries: I fixed the currency for Monsanto (no longer trading since Bayer takeover) to USD as their debt in Canada is now showing under symbol MON and reporting the currency as CAD instead. After the 13-F and 10-Q in August, this will become irrelevant as the after-tax cash proceeds of the takeover will be reflected in the financial statements. I've also made the sheet a bit more resilient to changing functionality of the GOOGLEFINANCE() function which I have reported but which hasn't been permanently fixed - I guess it depends whether their data provider at any moment returns a value or not in some edge cases. Where both currencies were the same, e.g. CURRENCY:USDUSD, it used to return 1.0, but now returns #N/A error sometimes, meaning any dependent cells also show #N/A error. I now check if they match and return 1.0 if they do. On my personal sheets, I sometimes track UK shares priced in British Pennies GBX but want to convert to British Pounds GBP, my home currency, so on those sheet I also check for that and return 0.01 to fix a similar sporadic bug that covers my sheet in error messages.

I'm not answering for rb, but I recall an off the cuff example in an interview, possibly CNBC after the annual report in February, where Buffett said that if a large block of stock became available, for example from a family or foundation that couldn't easily sell in the open market and they felt it made sense the board might increase the buyback authorisation slightly to maybe 128% or something. A large enough block would be meaningful enough to move the needle in increasing intrinsic value per share. I believe the question was asked in relation to the tax cut. Every dollar of book value, except those where the after tax return is regulated (Energy) or competed away (McLane or auto insurance maybe over time), should now be more productive. Equally the economic goodwill of companies like GEICO gets ever greater as they grow without a mark up in their book value.

https://investorplace.com/2018/06/dont-sell-berkshire-hathaway-stock-despite-recent-underperformance/ The above article, while still thinking it likely that Berkshire will get broken up in future (possibly by the government, not the management) and thinking that this will result in a shareholder windfall, is much more reasonable about why Berkshire is good value especially compared to richly priced areas of the market such as FANG stocks.

I think perhaps it's a sign that the general market is not cheap. These stories also tend to surface when Berkshire happens to be trading near the bottom of its range, making the unfavorable comparisons with the total return index 'work' in supporting the premise over a number of years, making it easier to mask cherry picking of data points for the comparisorn because the cherry picked end date is the obvious point of comparison - today In the last couple of days we've seen price to intrinsic value about as low as any time in the last two years, so many n-year periods will look bad for Berkshire. To my mind the suggestions made might please "the market" in the short term but not help Berkshire in the long term, but the refusal to act on them might sustain or even improve the shareholder constituency of Berkshire to those with a more long term value focus. One of the nice things with Berkshire is the number of surprises that are positive. They are few and far between in such a low interest rate, high market price environment hence the build up of low yielding cash, but it's possible that the next deal that significantly moves the needle in the way Precision Castparts did will create a significant surge in intrinsic value. For Berkshire's IV growth to pretty much match or slightly beat the pre tax market growth while building up so much cash and deducting tax deferrals from Berkshire's gains is no mean feat. When that cash is deployed in good deals at fair prices, it might start to look like it in the superficial terms the general market recognises. So yes, I'd take that article as a decent contrarian indicator

I remember that from his Reith lecture and various other podcasts from a few years ago. Amazingly smart idea.

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180620005747/en/Amazon-Berkshire-Hathaway-JPMorgan-Chase-appoint-Dr. Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase appoint Dr. Atul Gawande as Chief Executive Officer of their newly-formed company to address U.S. employee healthcare The new company to operate independently and be based in Boston If you're interested he has 2012 TED talk and presented the 2014 Reith Lectures on BBC Radio 4, both of which seem to revolve around fixing healthcare systems, and both of which should still be available to listen to.

Hi John, The UK has Individual Savings Accounts (ISAs). For us, the Stocks and Shares ISA is the one to consider. not Cash ISAs. The ISA is a wrapper that shelters you from capital gains tax and UK tax on dividends, but also you cannot offset losses within an ISA for gains outside it. Withholding tax on foreign dividends is still payable. So are market fees like UK Stamp Duty PTM Levy etc, and brokerage commissions. Unlike a pension where you put in money from your pre-tax income but may pay tax later on your income during retirement, your contributions are from after-tax income but gains and withdrawals are tax free afterwards. The ISA is more flexible than a pension allowing you to withdraw money at any age. Potentially, your ISA could be used to pay creditors if you went bankrupt, whereas a pension is more protected, but that's not something that matters to me. I really like the flexibility offered by an ISA. Currently, UK taxpayers can put £20,000 each per year into an ISA (previously £7,000 in the early 2000s), so a couple can put £40,000 in each tax year (which runs 6th April to 5th April in the UK). You can withdraw as much as you like, but total deposits in a year are limited to £20,000 per person. There are no joint ISA accounts. These account allow you to purchase Shares (Equity) or Funds on any major market if supported by your broker, but the only currency allowed is GBP, so when I bought and sold AAPL and BRK.B I did it via a LSE platform, quoted in GBP albeit during US trading hours. My ISA account doesn't allow limit orders etc. There are no exotic things available such as margin or trading in options, commodities or futures under ISA rules. Our ISAs remain the home to majority of our discretionary portfolio and are likely to remain our preferred home for the majority of our funds. UK Capital Gains tax - aside from the additional entries on your online self-assessment tax return - is fairly kind compared to many other jurisdictions I know of. First each person gets an allowance for tax-free gains, this year being £11,700 each over and above your 'personal allowance' before you pay income tax. This means the tax authorities don't get bogged down with small investors. A married couple (or civil partners) are allowed to gift shares and transfer the cost basis to their spouse, effectively using both allowances to maximum effect - £23,400 this year for a couple and trending upwards during this government's term. After that tax-free gains allowance, the capital gains tax is now only 10% for a lower-rate taxpayer until the gains in excess of your free allowance take you into the upper earnings band (if your income doesn't already put you there), and 20% from there on. There is no distinction between short-term and long-term gains in the UK. Also, the identification rules mean that you can switch to an equivalent investment if you like, e.g. BRK.B on NYSE, BRKB in Mexico, or BRYN in Frankfurt are all exposed to Berkshire Hathaway Class B stock but are different securities for capital gains tax identification. You could deliberately realise some gains up to your allowance one year to increase your cost basis if you wish by selling one and buying a different equivalent on the same day for the price of just the spread and currency conversion. Otherwise you need to wait 30 days to buy back in if it's the exact same instrument before you can reset your cost basis. My move of about 35% of our portfolio outside the ISA tax-free wrapper means we're exposed to CGT, but we can make some significant gains and even then may only pay modest tax on it. We can also take some of the gains and original cost basis out of the new investments and contribute back to our two ISAs at up to £40,000 per tax year as we wish, sheltering it once more. If we wanted to put back £80,000 we could put in £40,000 before April 5th then £40,000 after April 6th. Our new brokerage account does allow most of the features like margin and various currencies and some other instruments and additional markets not available within our ISAs, which just increases our scope and choices. Dealing costs are also a little lower. I can also file a W-8BEN to reduce my withholding tax on US dividends to 15% (this is possible in ISAs, but only if supported by the broker, which our discount broker did not support). The tax consequences really only kick in if the positions happen to be very very successful (thanks to the Capital Gains allowance before the tax becomes payable) and occur only when we choose to realise gains. I'll concentrate first on making the optimal investment decision and have tax as only a secondary consideration. The principal reason for our move is for improved flexibility, features and choices in investments, coupled with a minimal tax penalty if any. It also means that if something bad (perhaps a computer failure lasting many weeks) were to befall our main broker, although it's protected by the FSCS, we'd have backup funds elsewhere just in case. In the end we might even decide to use some of our future ISA contributions allowance with a different ISA broker that permits international stock trading, just to insulate ourselves against this modest risk.

I wanted to sell a small proportion of my BRK.B holding to add to the AAPL proceeds I want to shift to its new home, hopefully repurchasing most or all of that BRK.B in a few days within this new account. I decided I'd hold out until BRK.B was a little higher before doing so, as it seems particularly cheap right now. So I figured I'd take a bit of a short-term punt and put the AAPL proceeds into BRK.B while it was so cheap and maybe gain a couple of percent with luck without too much downside risk and no tax consequences, before I aim to make the sale and transfer the proceeds to their new home. Uncharacteristically, just this once, I'm acting like a day-trader! I won't make a habit of it! I sold that short-term BRK.B over a week ago at a bit over $194, roughly break-even measured in GBP (the exchange rate has moved quite a bit though). I then waited for it to settle, withdrew the money in GBP, and transferred it to the alternative investment I mentioned and also have some in our new, more flexible, but not tax-sheltered joint investment account where I can hold currencies like USD, use limit orders etc., file a W-8BEN to reduce my withholding tax and even employ margin if I wish. The currency moved against me a little at the time. Today I restored much of my BRK.B position at an effective price of about $189.84, reducing my cash to essentially zero. I made some losses in the GBP:USD exchange but offset them by the drop in BRK.B stock price, so my brief time out of the market having to withdraw and transfer cash is pretty much a wash, maybe fractionally in my favour. Effectively over about 2-3 weeks (ignoring the initial money taken out of the picture for my alternative investment), the weightings among my discretionary stock portfolio have changed as follows: WAS: about 26% AAPL & 70% BRK.B + 4% others NOW: exactly 0% AAPL & 96% BRK.B + 4% others

HELOC (or an offset mortgage in the UK, which is much harder to get these days) where you have the flexibility to draw on it at will is the sort of non callable long duration leverage that can let you ride out even a pretty drawn out bear market. I think that suits the temperament of value investors who know something is deeply undervalued with high certainty but little clue about the timing or prices during the intervening period. If I have the mental fortitude to ride out falling prices I don't want to go close to any margin threshold where my lender can force me to sell my positions.

Aha, I see that to get Form 4 reports on EDGAR search you must select "• Include" next to the filter entitled "Ownership?". I was thus able to find the filing you linked to, gfp, both via Wells Fargo and via Berkshire Hathaway, Inc. When accessing EDGAR via the SEC filings link at berkshirehathaway.com the 'Include' option does not appear to be selected, so Form 4 filings (e.g. Ajit Jain's disposals when gifting to charity) do not normally show up. I usually see these via my http://www.rocketfinancial.com/ portfolio email alerts, which are set to "All News and Filings". If you search Berkshire Hathaway, Inc and •Include Ownership, and search prior to date 20170420 you will see the first 4 filing type is the Wells Fargo filing you linked to. The second was a charitable gift of BRK.B stock by Warren Buffett.

Thanks, gfp, for clarifying the call option proposal re USG. I obviously had lodged that in my brain incorrectly. On thinking about your suspicion that Berkshire has stopped buying Apple, I think you're right and that they may potentially have even decided to trim their position by a small amount to stay below the reporting threshold. Regarding Apple and the 13D requirements, I wasn't aware that 13D reporting came at 5% as I'm fairly new to trawling through all the EDGAR filings, especially since I've started receiving them on email via rocketfinancial and since I start looking at historic 13D filings to calculate the holdings by pensions funds for various Berkshire subsidiary employees to account for these in the Look Through spreadsheet, but here's a decent summary I found in response to gfp's post: 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.

Berkshire has filed a 13D/A regarding USG. Scrolling to the notes section: Same holdings as before but they have given their proxy to the acquirer, Knauf, to accept the acquisition offer and clarified that their previous offer of a $42-strike call option on all their stock to Knauf at $2 price did not proceed. The $43.50 + 50¢ special dividend offer provides the same $44 return to all shareholders. Courtesy Rocketfinancial email alerts

I have now updated my Look Through Spreadsheets, taking account of perhaps $2.44 per share in tax on the gains (all estimated from unknown buy price) to include estimated net cash proceeds resulting from Monsanto of $125.56 per share. That would be about a 9% return after tax if my estimates are correct, which sounds about right for a 6-9 month merger arb. Google now makes it very easy to copy my look-through spreadsheet into your own private Google Sheet. A single operation File/Make a copy... I've also made the other updates for the quarter and the sheet now shows crude quarter-to-quarter changes on the Combined Holdings sheet. This is supposed to represent owner-shares and owner-earnings, and excludes pension holdings where I could find them. In further news Knauf 's takeover of USG is now approved but hasn't closed yet: Within 6 months, the USG deal for $44 per share acquisition by Knauf will close, too, but for now I'll leave it on the spreadsheet. That deal will be $0.50 per share as a special dividend plus $43.50 per share in cash. For now, I expect the stock price to track an estimated time-value discount to the takeover price plus dividend, remaining close to $43-44 per share. The look through spreadsheet I'd advise you to Make a copy of for your own use is: • Berkshire Hathaway Look Through Earnings & Holdings The spreadsheet that is publicly editable by anyone (but anyone can see any edits you make, the edit history, or corrupt the spreadsheet) is: • Berkshire Look through earnings - Public editing allowed

I've just updated the sheets with all the changes mentioned above. I also note that it's now very easy to make your own copy of my spreadsheet - just use the File/Make a copy... command in Google Sheet, so I changed the instructions sheet - now much simpler! There was a $128.00 per share cash takeover of Monsanto (MON) by Bayer on 7th June, closing out this presumed merger arbitrage position, worth almost $1 per BRK.B share in total. I've assumed close to $0.09 per BRK.B share after tax profit over the 6-9 months the position has been held. I have hard-coded MON (Monsanto) to $125.56 market price. This reflects the estimated cash left after an estimated average purchase price of $116.38, and $11.72 USD pre-tax gain per share. Tax at 21% ~= $2.44/sh. Approx 7.9% after tax gain estimated in 6-9 months. In practice Berkshire may well have bought more MON stock this quarter too and the gain could have been a little more or a little less, but better to be roughly right etc. I've also hard-coded the EPS for MON to essentially zero (I actually set it to 1e-18 USD to avoid #DIV/0 errors, which is essentially zero) as this position is mainly cash now, and will add to the cash balance at the end of this quarter, when the 13-F will be updated (in mid August). Within 6 months, the USG deal for $44 per share acquisition by Knauf will close, too, but for now I'll leave it on the spreadsheet. That deal will be $0.50 per share as a special dividend plus $43.50 per share in cash. For now, I expect the stock price to track an estimated time-value discount to the takeover price plus dividend, remaining close to $43-44 per share. The spreadsheet I'd advise you to Make a copy of for your own use is: • Berkshire Hathaway Look Through Earnings & Holdings The spreadsheet that is publicly editable by anyone (but anyone can see any edits you make, the edit history, or corrupt the spreadsheet) is: • Berkshire Look through earnings - Public editing allowed

https://www.gurufocus.com/news/692562/bayer-closes-merger-with-buffetts-monsanto A misleading headline - Buffett is the Chairman & CEO of Berkshire, a minority shareholder in Monsanto until the takeover by Bayer - but this apparent Merger Arbitrage appears to have been successful for Berkshire, the takeover closing at $128 per share of Monsanto stock. Berkshire's holding as of 31st March had been 18,970,134 shares of MON (then trading at $116.69) and worth $2,213,624,936 at that date. The number of shares had increased 62.0% over 31st December 2017 and I wouldn't be surprised if buying continued since the quarter ended until MON ceased trading on 7th June. Assuming the same holdings at the close of the transaction, they'd have been worth $2,428,177,152, an increase of 9.7% since quarter end, which compares favourably with S&P500 and the Total Return Index since 31st March. SP500 +7.6% SP500TR +8.1% Weirdly all the Berkshire 13-F filings called it MOSANTO. Of course, it will be missing from next quarter's 13-F but we might find some disclosure of it in the footnotes of the 10-Q, though there's no specific obligation to report the details. I'll need to update my Look-Through spreadsheet to account for this (which I still haven't updated fully since the May 13-F). Perhaps I'll just enter something like $2.36bn of cash in its place (assuming about 21% tax on gains of very roughly $328mn). The effect of my assumption is fairly immaterial to the whole look-through portfolio.

Both Google and Yahoo Finance searches for the ticker will give a panel of People also Watch... or People Also Search For... in a panel on the right side.

I wanted to sell a small proportion of my BRK.B holding to add to the AAPL proceeds I want to shift to its new home, hopefully repurchasing most or all of that BRK.B in a few days within this new account. I decided I'd hold out until BRK.B was a little higher before doing so, as it seems particularly cheap right now. So I figured I'd take a bit of a short-term punt and put the AAPL proceeds into BRK.B while it was so cheap and maybe gain a couple of percent with luck without too much downside risk and no tax consequences, before I aim to make the sale and transfer the proceeds to their new home. Uncharacteristically, just this once, I'm acting like a day-trader! I won't make a habit of it!

Thanks. I imagine it'll be a long time before I find another investment like that, but I'm sure glad I took Charlie Munger's advice to really take a big position with a truly high conviction idea.

I've sold my entire Apple (AAPL) position today at around $188.42 USD (£140.73 GBP) leaving me about 28.4% cash (previously 0.13%), 68.4% BRK.B, 2.2% my spouse's ShareSave employee option scheme, and a tiny few dribs and drabs in HPE, HPQ etc. This is not a bearish move on AAPL, although I may have estimated that I was selling near a short-term high, hoping not to lose too much in the many days it may take to shift the proceeds to their new home and possibly reinvest at least some of it into AAPL. This sale is within a UK ISA so no tax consequences on this sale, though I'll be withdrawing the proceeds from the ISA and the ISA annual subscription limit is high enough that my spouse and I can add back at a reasonably high rate between us in future if we want to tax-shelter some of our investments and simplify our tax returns too. We also have a UK Tax Free Capital Gains allowance for investments outside the ISA, and I'm both shifting some money into an alternative brokerage account in which I may well repurchase a good chunk of Apple (and be eligible to file W-8BEN and reduce my withholding tax on its dividends from 30% to 15%) and intending to make an alternative investment with some of the proceeds, which will mark a departure, as it's not the sort of thing I would be mentioning here. As I said I may well repurchase a pretty good position in AAPL within the new account, but a certain amount of my strategic risk tolerance may influence the proportion I take on in the near future. My post-mortem on this investment so far is a pleasant one, much better than my meagre sub-market returns from IBM and WFC. I'd say this was one of my best high conviction ideas, and I still think it presents above average compounding opportunity going forward. The purchase at $95 (and sale of about three tenths of our BRK.B at $142 to fund it) was what I call a Value Trade, where I was pretty convinced that the Price to Intrinsic Value ratio of BRK.B was much higher than that of AAPL, so it made sense to trade up to the maximum AAPL exposure I was happy with to really take advantage of my high conviction. My purchase notes aren't the easiest for an outsider to digest - just a dozen lines in a single spreadsheet cell, so I won't paste them here, but all the qualitative markers held up, the pricing power was demonstrated very strongly by iPhone X in particular. I purchased at approx $95.00 at an earnings yield of about 9.5% (10.4% net of cash per share). My total return to date has been 118.99% in GBP, 102.33% in USD in a few days over 2 years. 3.6% of the return was in dividends net of 30% withholding tax (or about 5.1% if untaxed), and most of the dividends except the May 2018 one have been reinvested into BRK.B. IRR = 48.26% p.a. in GBP (beating the cost-free FTSE100-TRI IRR by 31.69%) IRR = 42.44% p.a. in USD (beating the cost-free SP500TR IRR by 24.76% in USD, or 25.88% in GBP, thanks to dividend currency exchange timing) In reality withholding tax wasn't a huge hit on my IRR in Apple to date. If I continue to hold from roughly current prices I wouldn't expect more than 15% IV per share compounding at the most, and probably somewhere above 10% with luck, which is still good, and I think AAPL is a reasonable purchase at this price. To me at current prices, BRK.B and AAPL offer fairly similar prospects (my imagined distribution of Price to Intrinsic Value ratio is tighter around BRK.B and broader around AAPL (where IV is less certain), but there's a lot of overlap so it's not clearly worth trading one for the other in a Value Trade).

I think a lot depends on your personality, and at some point that of your future spouse. If you can live comfortably below your means, perhaps by renting in a cheaper area, you can invest plenty to allow you to be opportunistic in future, perhaps in a stocks and shares ISA at up to £20,000 per year, so the returns are tax free, then you'd be able to build up enough over 5-10 years to see you through most potential difficulties. Being in London with good public transport and a London-weighted salary might help, as you can avoid depreciating expenses like cars. An electric bike and a good lock could shave travel costs even more and buy you a better future faster. If you can also make do without expensive subscriptions for TV and mobile phone call plans you can probably put a surprising amount of capital to work for you. Then you can build up resources to cover you for job-losses, give you financial flexibility or to be opportunistic with property. If a great opportunity comes along in the housing market it could well be worth taking, not directly as an investment but as a cheaper alternative to renting. Buying something of the size you need at a time of severe economic stress could replace your rent, which will go up and down over the years with the economy and inflation, with a lower cost of mortgage plus repairs. If you still have resources left over, you can continue investing in equities. With a rebound in the housing market you might well find the value rises by 30-70% over your purchase price and you could then even get the place revalued when you remortgage to qualify for lower rates (55% or lower loan-to-value is usually the lowest rate threshold in the UK). One conflict you might have as a value investor is whether to buy a discounted flat or discounted stocks. For me, the repossessed buy-to-let flat won, and frankly perhaps I should have mortgaged it to a higher LTV instead of the 55% LTV I chose for the lower interest rate. The flat has appreciated 60-70% from which I should perhaps deduct 8-9% for repairs such a roof renewal, so I've made well over 100% on my equity and now have about 25% LTV thanks to my normal repayments, and my mortgage repayments are now less than one third of equivalent rental cost for my flat. Fortunately after meeting my spouse, the flat passed muster, as did living frugally and investing hard, so we get to live well on one income and invest the other with a view to financial independence being right around the corner.

https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4624 Skeptoid's latest (Read or Listen from the link above) explains that the fate of Zuma, launched by SpaceX and allegedly lost due to a failure to separate from Northrup Grumman's payload adaptor's unusually gentle release mechanism, is genuinely an open question as it might well be, like MISTY in the 1990s, a stealth satellite. It's rather unusual for Skeptoid not to be able to simply debunk a conspiracy theory or pseudoscientific myth with solid facts by the end of the episode, but this is one where secrecy and potential cover stories remain a real possibility, though perhaps mission failure is a fraction more likely.

I'm just finishing up analysing the 13-F filings as of 31st March 2018 (filed 15th May 2018)for Berkshire Hathaway and will soon modify the Look Through Portfolio Google Sheets to include this. As I've said before, 13-F is meant to disclose control/voting interest to the SEC, not to report economic interest in the companies. SC 13G and 13D filings are similarly about voting and dispositive power, not economic interest, but help reveal pension fund holdings. My version differs deliberately from most of those you'll see on the web, as I am interested in approximately understanding the look-through economic interest we as Berkshire Hathaway shareholders have in the companies whose shares it owns. Thanks to the valuable help of other forum members since about the end of 2017 my analysis includes holdings reported on the New England Asset Management 13-F filing where the OTHER OWNER is shown as "01 02" (meaning Berkshire). This makes a significant adjustment in a few of the positions. I have also used information I have gleaned from the Berkshire 10-K Annual Report and SC 13D or 13D/A or SC 13G or 13G/A filings (e.g. Berkshire's holding in Davita) to adjust for holdings whose economic benefit is attributable to pension funds for employees of Berkshire subsidiaries (in Davita's case, this was over half the holding controlled by Berkshire, for American Airlines, close to 40%). I usually link to these next to the adjustments so you can verify and make any queries on the forum. R Ted Weschler has some apparent personal and shared holdings listed among the Liberty Sirius XM stocks which I think I didn't need to adjust for, but I might review this with some care shortly. It will not be completely accurate as Berkshire only has to file stocks traded in the USA to the SEC in this way. I have made some adjustments for declared foreign holdings to the best of my knowledge, usually based on declarations of significant holdings in the Annual Report. Some of these are based on news reports of Berkshire investments and may be only approximately correct regarding holding sizes. Also some of the holdings of pension funds within Berkshire may not be adjusted for. I have sanity-checked the assumed Apple holding against the 10Q, and it seems to match: Used -2,837,753 adjustment at year-end to match page 9 of 2017 Annual Report figures (to exclude pension scheme assets). At 31/03/18 AAPL closing price was $167.78. Calculated market value using my adjusted figure was $40,676,730,846, which matches the $40.7 billion (rounded to $0.1bn) mentioned on p11 of 2018Q1 10Q, so I will not assume any change in pension scheme holdings unless I find them disclosed in SC 13G or G/A filings - I gone back to about 31 Dec 2015 with those filings. A few comments about the new interpretation or quarterly changes to holdings (in ticker symbol order): The holdings reported are those attributable to shareholders, not the total holdings controlled by Berkshire which may include pension fund holdings. The adjustment mentioned may be larger than the shareholders' holding (e.g. DVA) AAL - holding unchanged at 25,258,000 but newly adjusted by -20,742,000 for pension fund holdings AAPL - 242,440,880 for shareholders, 75,727,671 added (+46.2%) already adjusted for pension holdings AXTA - unchanged 20,000,000 shares but newly adj for pension fund holdings BK - 54,680,199 for shareholders, 1,372,665 added (+2.3%) assuming unchanged pension holdings CHTR - 6,522,536 for shareholders, -266,518 reduce (-3.1%) DAL - 53,599,357 add 488,962 (+0.9%) DVA - 18,513,482 unchanged but -20,052,088 pension adjustment newly noted IBM - eliminated -2,048,045 (-100.0%) LBTYA - 17,906,408 reduce -2,274,489 (-11.3%) possibly to stay <10% of class LILA - 1,625,185 unchanged but -1,089,669 pension adjustment is newly noted LSXMA - 10,552,243 unchanged but -4,308,117 pension adjustment newly noted - R Ted Weschler's private holdings noted in form SC 13G but not 13-F, I think, so no adjustment needed LSXMK - 23,942,958 unchanged but -7,148,027 pension adjustment newly noted - R Ted Weschler's private holdings noted in form SC 13G but not 13-F, I think, so no adjustment needed MON - 18,970,134 add 7,261,387 (+62.0%) PSX - 39,587,892 reduce -35,000,000 (-43.4%), assuming still -6,102,000 pension holdings adjustment SNY - 44,134,997 assuming no sale of Euronext stock (non-reportable) reduce -177,512 (-4.6%) UAL - 26,114,584 reduce -505,600 (-1.8%), assuming -1,591,379 adjustment for pension holdings unchanged VRSK - 3,238,828 reduce -1,278,656 (-81.8%) - N.B, majority held by New England Asset Management VRSN - unchanged at 7,905,481 but noted -5,047,264 pension holdings WFC - 480,825,444 reduce -1,719,024 (-0.4%) probably to stay <10% avoiding bank holding co status

I think a hot decade is probably a good warning sign to expect far less in the future and to discount some of your gains in that decade if you're calculating how much of your portfolio you can 'spend' each year, especially if you hold the S&P500 index. Buffett's Fortune article in the early 2000s suggested at best 6-7% above inflation in the future, I recall. If you're living from your portfolio as some might in retirement, perhaps after a decade of 18-19% returns with modest inflation it would be sensible to assume you are in for a decade of low digit returns on average (with potential market crash somewhere in the middle). Perhaps taking out 3-5 years' income and putting it in cash (even if you miss out on some further gains) would be sensible to ride out the likely crash without needing to sell stock, and potentially even to reinvest much of that cash in the event of a crash. Certainly, you should not assume you can live on an annual income of 18-19% of your portfolio less inflation rate and not see the value of your portfolio dwindle in real terms. Probably 3-4% of the portfolio is nearer the limit in normal times, and maybe 2-3% after such a bull run.

Skepticism is to be applauded, as unlike cynics, true skeptics are willing to follow wherever the evidence leads (adjusted for prior plausibility). In this case, the boost from dividend reinvestment matches a lot of similar studies. One that is regularly repeated and updated and believed to have sound methodology is the UK Equity Gilt Study (currently sponsored by Barclays and published since 1956) which evaluates Equities versus UK Government Bonds (known as Gilts) in inflation-adjusted terms since 1899 and US data since 1925. The 2016 version shows UK real returns since 1899 on page 58 and US real returns since 1925 on page 63, along with inflation, which you can add back to get nominal returns. p61 talks about the importance of reinvestment of dividends or coupons/interest received. Figures 10 and 11 are quite astounding, showing the effect since 1899 of reinvesting dividends. p66 does the same for US returns. The general gist is that typically in the UK, the capital-only real return is a little under 4% and the real return with dividends reinvested is about 8% in the very long term, so reinvesting dividends over the whole period has led, on average to approximately doubling the annual real rate of return, and compounded over so many decades results in something like 1000x more capital being accumulated. Lately, both US and UK markets have seen somewhat higher prices and reduced dividend rates, especially the US with a shift to increasing buybacks in the last decade or two, which ought to lower the dividend reinvestment effect and increase the capital-only return. I track the S&P500 and its Total Return version SP500TR since around 1999, and I also track the FTSE100/FTSE100TRI, plus the FT All Share and its Total Return Index (which I can usually find only every 6 months, but which I estimate live using an assumed dividend effect). 1999-12-31 S&P500=1469.25, SP500TR=2021.40 2017-12-31 S&P500=2673.61, SP500TR=5212.76 18-year CAGR S&P500=3.38% (capital only), SP500TR=5.40% (reinvested without tax), therefore dividend effect = 2.02% (geometric), arithmetic average div eff = 2.07% 18-year overall return of SP500 = +132.88%, SP500TR = +221.98%, Dividend Reinvestment Effect = +89.10% I have similar numbers for FTSE100 (approximated due to missing Total Return data from first 4 years): 18-yr CAGR FTSE100=0.58% (capital only), FTSE100TRI=4.51%, dividend effect = 3.93% (both geometric and arithmetic average) 18-yr overall return of FTSE100 = +10.93%, FTSE100TRI = +121.12%, Div Reinv Effect = +110.19% 18-yr CAGR of FT-All Share = 1.48%, FTAS-TRI = 4.94%, Div eff = 3.46% (geom), 3.49% (arith) 18-yr overall return FTAS = +30.22%, FTAS-TRI = +138.10%, Div Reinv Effect = +107.88% (Much UK data sourced from http://siblisresearch.com/data/ftse-all-total-return-dividend/) I have held some stocks bought at reasonable yields with growing dividends, e.g. HLMA (Halma plc) bought at 136p (an 8.5% FCF yield) in Oct 2001 returned me about 80%+ of my purchase price in dividends before I sold at about 838p in Feb 2016. That's substantial dividend contribution, much of it I wasted on bad investments where the moat had eroded. Berkshire on the other hand has not paid a dividend since I bought in July 2003, but has reinvested profits satisfactorily internally and compounded at 9.81% (measured in USD) versus 9.22% for the SP500TR, giving $4.01 for every $1.00 invested 15 years ago versus $3.70 from the S&P500 Total Return Index. In GBP the same return was £4.71 for every pound invested (11.02%), versus £4.35 for the S&P500TR converted to GBP (10.43%), again a 0.59% advantage to BRK.B. My actual XIRR (in GBP) from my various purchases and sales of BRK.B has been 11.97%. Were it not for a temporary sale that cost me only 3.65% over about 8 months before I repurchased, my counterfactual XIRR would have been 11.75%, and had I held all my BRK.B instead of selling 27.7% of it to help buy a 25% position in AAPL at $95 in May 2016, it would have been 12.49% (or 12.19% without either sale). XIRR is a bit weird like that. I lost 3.65% but because it was over 8 months this was less than the average compound growth rate so my XIRR increased! I lowered my XIRR on my BRK.B position by selling about 30% of it to by AAPL, but more than made up for it by earning 47.88% XIRR on the AAPL position (to date, after 30% withholding tax on dividends and currency effects). I've reinvested all of the AAPL dividend stream and more added cash besides into BRK.B. Anyway, the gist is that dividend reinvestment does make a huge difference on average, though certain companies reinvesting internally without paying a dividend can still beat the market, so invest for Total Return, regardless of how it is returned to you and insist on a Margin of Safety and you should compound well for decades.

@bargainman - thanks for this approach. I've implemented it in Scripts (Sheets also has Macros and Macro Recorder now, which is a useful interface for automating tasks and helping to write scripts) I was looking for an Ask price and got it working, but now I notice that although the script is pulling the correct "ask" price from the query URL which I checked manually, some of the options prices on https://query2.finance.yahoo.com/v7/finance/options/ + TICKER are not updating, even daily, so are different from those shown on a site like marketwatch.com which does seem to be updating I may ask Yahoo to look into this, but does anyone know if it's possible to query structured data from other sites in a similar way so I could implement an alternative? For now, I run a separate worksheet where I can copy and paste the table from the marketwatch site (use Ctrl+Shift+V to Paste Values only). I might try Record Macro to see if I can implement that in a script, but I suspect it won't record my visit to their site and the Copy part of the procedure.