Donald Johnson

Barron's: Financials Weigh on Berkshire Hathaway

Pretty much agree arten. The thing plunged between the expiration of the call and when the market reopened Jan. 20. I should have bot the call back 1.16 and taken my 10% loss on the stock. Now, I feel stuck with it and will try to work myself out of the hole selling calls and making sure I'm not called.

Berkshire Hathaway Is Not a Value Now

Good post. Morningstar.com gives the brk.b a $5,100 estimated fair value. So it's trading at 76% of estimated FV, up from about 72% a couple of weeks ago.

The stock's on sale and going down for the reasons cited above. We're in a bear market, and BRK is likely to move with the market. Basically, BRK is in three highly risky sectors: Financials including banking and insurance, housing and industrials. Its best sector at this point appears to be rails, but for how long? Depends on what happens with energy and the elections. I'm thinking that if the Dems lift the bans on oil drilling in Sept. or convincingly indicate they will, oil prices will plunge and stocks will soar. At this point, I wouldn't buy BRK, because it looks like it's going lower. If it swings into a bull market, then I might jump aboard, but not till its technicals look better than they do today.

Berkshire Could Hit $200K Within Two Years - Barron's

I don't know. It seems to me that BRK has become such a complex conglomerate that it's impossible for one person or one think tank to analyze the company. Individual investors have to depend on third-hand reports like Abeleson's and Barron's and on various technical indicators.

Most important, as indicated above, this seems to be an almost faith-based investment, which can be kinda risky, imho.

The idea that BRK can replace Buffett and Munger puzzles me. Whoever succeeds them will change the business model, the approach to investing and the management style. That's what people do, and what they will do in their own unique environments is so unpredictable that it seems very speculative to say, "everything will be just fine."

A new CEO may breakup the company, expand it or who knows what.

Doug Kass's Killer Shorts - Barron's

People buy BRK.B because of Buffett even though, as Kass notes, his investment style is changing. The company is a huge ETF with all of the problems of ETFs and mutual funds and without their ability to trade in and out of the wholly-owned investments. I suspect most people who are taking time to read SA and related sites would rather run their own portfolios instead of buying into Buffett's.