Buffett/Berkshire - general news

[HeadOfLeverage]

Anyone with a link to the full replay?

[Stuart D]

13 minutes ago, HeadOfLeverage said:

Anyone with a link to the full replay?

Yeah, I can’t find one either. Seemed much easier to find last year with yahoo finance/YouTube.

[sleepydragon]

9 minutes ago, Stuart D said:

Yeah, I can’t find one either. Seemed much easier to find last year with yahoo finance/YouTube.

Maybe reply will be for pro subscribers,lol

[Stuart D]

Best I can find so far:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeBjFYvQ1tc&ab_channel=JerryBrodie

[HeadOfLeverage]

Yeah I don't understand why they switched to CNBC. Thank you @Stuart D!

[Xerxes]

I had trouble finding it on YouTube in the morning. I think it was meant to be a exclusive on CNBC.com. Not even on the CNBC feed of YouTube. 
 

for those looking for a replay, they did say it would be included in the CNBC Buffett archive. I don’t think there is a firewall there. 

[fareastwarriors]

Usually CNBC will have a full replay available. It might be a few days later though. 

[sleepydragon]

1 hour ago, HeadOfLeverage said:

Yeah I don't understand why they switched to CNBC. Thank you @Stuart D!

cuz I think last year yahoo finance screwed up, there’s was maybe 30 minutes or an hour that there’s no videos 

[cubsfan]

2 hours ago, Stuart D said:

Best I can find so far:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeBjFYvQ1tc&ab_channel=JerryBrodie

 

Bless you - thanks Stuart D. 

[Thrifty3000]

8 hours ago, adesigar said:

During the Q&A Warren Buffett seemed to be rambling.

Definitely rambling. Especially during the annual meeting portion. Repeated some stories a couple times too - like the origin/importance of Ajit Jain. Made

me worry a touch about dementia.

 

I’d like to think the rambling was just his excitement about answering questions in front of a live audience after a few years of pandemic-induced isolation.

 

But, I know better. The old boy’s gettin on up there in years. He’s still smart as a whip. It’s amazing that nonagenarian brain is still able to hang in there for six solid hours.

[CanadianMunger]

It's odd because Warren seemed sharp in the Charlie Rose interview.  Perhaps it was edited and condensed?

 

Took a quick reminisce tour through the CNBC annual meeting archive starting in 1994, and skipped every 5 years.  Warren still seemed pretty sharp even last year.

 

TBH it gives me pause as BRK is my largest holding.  He has noted that the board will know when to take the keys away - but lets be honest - these people have adored and loved him for decades.

 

They say an experience is not only valued on the whole but particularly based on how it ends.  I hope my last impressions of the GREATEST OF ALL TIME are not what we saw today.  

 

I thought I would never say this, but perhaps it is time Warren retired.

 

-CM

[cubsfan]

^^^ Don't know about that. Could be as simple as the guy didn't get enough sleep. Berkshire Annual Meeting 

week is a long grueling affair for both of these gentlemen.  I'm definitely not worried about one rambling 

performance.

[LearningMachine]

What do folks think Buffett bought beyond Y, CVX, OXY, HPQ, and BRK?  

 

Wonder what he sold? 

 

 

 

Edited May 1, 2022 by LearningMachine

[aceskc]

 

Investments in Banks went up 10B. So it must be +100b business thats not bac and unlikely to be wfc. My best guess is JPM.

[gfp]

6 minutes ago, LearningMachine said:

What do folks think Buffett bought beyond Y, CVX, OXY, HPQ, and BRK?  

 

Wonder what he sold? 

 

 

 

well he didn’t buy any Y yet. He bought 9.5% of ATVI. He bought a little more of all

5 Japanese trading companies. He bought a couple German stocks and one more foreign stock I can’t recall. No idea what was sold. 

[sleepydragon]

1 hour ago, Thrifty3000 said:

Definitely rambling. Especially during the annual meeting portion. Repeated some stories a couple times too - like the origin/importance of Ajit Jain. Made

me worry a touch about dementia.

 

I’d like to think the rambling was just his excitement about answering questions in front of a live audience after a few years of pandemic-induced isolation.

 

But, I know better. The old boy’s gettin on up there in years. He’s still smart as a whip. It’s amazing that nonagenarian brain is still able to hang in there for six solid hours.

you ignored another problem. The questions are the same every year. So he had to repeat himself, or maybe adding some details

[sleepydragon]

If someone ask a question Buffett don’t want to say much, like “does the inflation worries you so why are u still buying stocks”, “what price are you doing stock buybacks”, he is going to ramble.

 

but if you ask him about Bitcoin, evaluate farm lands, talking about arbitrage, he doesn’t seem to be rambling to me.

 

even when he’s rambling, if you listen very carefully between the lines, you get what he’s trying to say but doesn’t want to say directly, impo.

[Spekulatius]

On 4/30/2022 at 8:49 AM, gfp said:

 

Yeah, GEICO even had a ton of cost-cutting with expense ratios way down.  But this huge boom in the value of used cars and inflation in the cost of car parts is killing them.  PGR is also raising prices, but looks like GEICO is choosing to be slower with price increases.  Also injury claims values are trending higher than general inflation.  Luckily, GEICO can change prices on a 6 month rolling basis, so can adjust over the course of a year if they choose to.

 

More interesting to me is the difference between so many other insurers celebrating "hard market" and writing huge growth in premium volume and profitability, where Berkshire seems to be taking the opposite approach.  Very slow growth outside of BH Specialty/primary - and low underwriting profitability.  Could be more conservative assumptions since maybe Berkshire is being more real about inflation than other insurers.  

Inflation is tricky for insurers. Geico almost went bust due to inflation and bad underwriting in the 70's. The hard market could become a suckers market if the inflation keeps up and insurers underwrite risk where the LT liabilities inflate going forward. I bet Warren remembers this all too well. The rest of the insurers exec probably not so much or take a gamble on inflation normalizing anyways.

[bennycx]

On 5/1/2022 at 11:04 AM, aceskc said:

 

Investments in Banks went up 10B. So it must be +100b business thats not bac and unlikely to be wfc. My best guess is JPM.

Maybe not a Bank but a big non bank financial?

[ValueMaven]

I know people HALF WEB's age that ramble 2x as much.  Give me a break.  

[Blugolds]

1 hour ago, ValueMaven said:

I know people HALF WEB's age that ramble 2x as much.  Give me a break.  

 

I compare Warren to my own grandfather with regard to age and mental acuity. Gramps just recently passed in Jan at 91...did crossword puzzles every single day. When it came to some topics he was sharp, you would think he was 50 yrs old...even remembered to ask for an update on things that we hadnt talked about for several years, but other topics he had a hard time remembering or got mixed up. Overall toward the end he just slowed. It is also sometimes tricky because personally, if you asked me what I ate for breakfast or dinner yesterday or the day before it would take a second...so tough to say what is "normal" with each individual. 

 

Overall I think for their age WB and CM are mentally doing very well with some allowed slow down in mental/verbal speed...my god everyone gets a little "tired" at 90! The fact that they still travel, are mobile, and still are able to sit up there for hours and conduct the meeting to me is impressive as I dont think my grandfather would have been able to do that at all, I know he wouldnt have been able to, granted WB has has a different life, but still, anyone who has spent significant time around the "advanced" elderly would put both WB and CM well beyond average in ability for their age, both mentally and physically. 

 

From my experience also, the mental/physical decay at these ages is not always linear, as in there is not always a specific change from one year to the next that is noticeable, many times I have seen someone past 90 take a 180 within months, either mentally or physically. I certainly dont hope that is the case here, hoping for at least another decade out of both of them, but also realistic. 

 

WB is very aware of the actuary tables, averages etc. I also wonder how much WB is involved now, my guess is that the transition will be smooth as that would be the smartest way to do it. What I mean is that by the time Greg takes over 100% it wont be a sudden change as my guess is he will already have been doing 90% of the job already. That is what I would do if I was in that situation...ie. the kid is already balancing without the training wheels before you take you hand off the back of the seat...

[yesman182]

3 hours ago, bennycx said:

Maybe not a Bank but a big non bank financial?

I thought he sold JPM because Todd is on the board, not for financial reasons(just my speculation). He has said in the past that he doesn’t want things to even resemble a conflict of interest or that he somehow has “insider information”. All that said I suspect it’s JPM, although it isn’t clear why he was so excited to tell people about ATVI and AAPL but not this bank buying, perhaps because he is don’t with ATVI but not with the banks? 

[r.ph.schaefer]

"Buffett also said at the meeting that Berkshire had bought shares in three German companies in the first quarter, but didn’t disclose the names."

 

Any ideas what stocks these might be? I know, it's just speculation at this point...

[jbwent63]

9 hours ago, r.ph.schaefer said:

"Buffett also said at the meeting that Berkshire had bought shares in three German companies in the first quarter, but didn’t disclose the names."

 

Any ideas what stocks these might be? I know, it's just speculation at this point...

Hopefully gfp will post the quarterly report from NICO that might provide some of these answers for stocks that are not required to be reported to the SEC on form13-F.

[Xerxes]

Knowing what we know about the giant Activision position, it is worth re-watching that segment of the Charlie Rose interview, when he asks Buffett about his two BIG invstments (Oxy and Activision), of course not realizing that there was actually a big position in activision which was not disclosed yet.

 

Buffett had a split-second pause before he responded and went on and on about the media mis-reporting.