Why Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Is Still A Great Long-Term Holding

Jim Sloan
22.35K Followers

Summary

  • Berkshire is the #8 stock in the S&P 500 and #1 in the S&P Value Index; it's a highly diversified conglomerate with a large position in Apple.
  • Berkshire's business model is unique, with decentralized operational management and centralized capital allocation; its Big Four businesses are insurance/reinsurance, BNSF, Apple shares, and BHEnergy.
  • Berkshire has outperformed the S&P 500 20% to 10% annualized over 55 years, trailed over the past ten years, led over the previous decade and leads this year.
  • Berkshire is hard to analyze because its businesses require different methods of analysis and are inter-connected in subtle ways; to summarize, it has solid growth at a reasonable price.
  • With no dividend, buybacks are key and enable a manufactured dividend while generating growth in the percentage of ownership of assets and earnings.
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Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRK.A)(NYSE:BRK.B) is the eighth largest company in the S&P 500 as measured by market capitalization. You can see this and other market cap rankings updated daily in the Vanguard S&P 500 Index ETF (

This article was written by

22.35K Followers
I am a retired professor, a retired investment adviser, and currently a private investor and full-time tennis pro. I bought my first stock in a custodial account in 1958. I am a student of history, particularly military and economic/market history. The intellectual passions of my retirement years have been markets, mathematics, and quantum theory. Recently I have found myself reading book after book on the thoughts and feelings of animals, and I believe they are subtly influencing some of my views. I have a cat I like a lot. I like to travel. I served in Vietnam.

Analyst’s Disclosure: I/we have a beneficial long position in the shares of BRK.B, GOOG either through stock ownership, options, or other derivatives. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

Seeking Alpha's Disclosure: Past performance is no guarantee of future results. No recommendation or advice is being given as to whether any investment is suitable for a particular investor. Any views or opinions expressed above may not reflect those of Seeking Alpha as a whole. Seeking Alpha is not a licensed securities dealer, broker or US investment adviser or investment bank. Our analysts are third party authors that include both professional investors and individual investors who may not be licensed or certified by any institute or regulatory body.

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