4Q20 Buyback?

[ValueMaven]

I say between $5 - $7B

[backtothebeach]

$7 - $10B option is missing...

[rkbabang]

$7 - $10B option is missing...

 

Interesting.  That could mean everyone will be wrong.

 

[Valuehalla]

9 B $ or more, less would be disappointing

[Xerxes]

I fully expect the Omaha team to keep buying at a higher and higher price.

 

The pandemic re baselined pretty much everything, and we are now on a trajectory that will see the world economies (Western anyways) open up late 2021 and 2022. A lot of money has been piling up in the consumer wallet pushing up saving rate to the highest. Supply is expanding given the billions that the Governments is ploughing in aids while demand being pushed to the right with the shutdown. Net effect: very high saving rate and hundreds of billions bubbling up.

 

Late in the year, those hundreds of billions will come out of deposit accounts and frothy financial assets and will hit the real economy when it opens up. Driving the mother of all GDP rebound, igniting inflation in goods and services and so on and so forward. The longer the shutdown (Western economies compared to Eastern economies), the mightier the rebound and the pent-up demand.

 

With that logic in mind, that GDP rebound will drive the real economy and its locomotive will start moving, and with it the other 495 companies in the S&P500, while the FANGS take a break as their earning catch up to valuations. Berkshire and Fairfax (more so FFH due to its international exposure) will both do well, which makes their respective pre-"GDP rebound" valuation cheap compared to what is to come.

 

Berkshire may be huge, but a broad-based giant GDP rebound will move needle on that beast and will awaken the sleeping giant.

And what could be a better bet for Berkshire than itself in that type of environment.