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2020 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Letter [pdf]

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Re: 2020 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Letter [pdf]

#11

Post by vlovich123 »

JesseMeyer wrote: post #8
whb07 wrote: post #5

Like every lion in the savanna, it must relinquish its reign at some point. Buffet talks pridefully about holding $250+ BILLION in cash, as if it were pegged to a gold standard. Nearly half his life was based on such a system, and so it’d be hard to remove that idea. Yet he sits on it proudly seemingly unaware that sitting on such an amount has eaten up 3%+ via the printing press of the FED. That and you know... not…

Do you honestly believe that Warren does not understand inflation?

Perhaps you can understand inflation and still make a mistake?

Re: 2020 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Letter [pdf]

#14

Post by blantonl »

bedhead wrote: post #6

While I'm not of these meme investors who thinks Buffett is "washed up", I confess that I've increasingly wondered if it's just sorta over. In some sense, it's not his fault. Berkshire has grown so large that it has significant scale problems. I joke that Buffett found the investing equivalent of the Donkey Kong kill screen, he basically broke the game. It's incredible. But there have been self-inflicted issues. The…

I think investors over the past year have grown so accustomed to something new and shiny and revolutionary coming every week to get excited about that they've forgotten that making money in markets successfully is about a long term focus and a LOT of boring details and unsexy businesses.

I, like a lot of people LOVE trading stocks and derivatives, and trying to beat the market -- more so as a hobby and as an opportunity to learn more about the more esoteric components of financial markets and how things operate. I've been doing it for over 15 years and I've paid my dues in terrible trades, and seen some great plays work out. The process of options pricing, managing ex-dividend dates and options, derivatives plays, trading styles like position and swing etc all are enormously fun to learn the nuances of. It's a fascinating world.

At the same time, the vast majority of the money that I save for retirement is your standard run of the mill dollar cost aversaging (DCA) into targeted funds based on my risk tolerance, age, and retirement objectives. Really boring stuff that works over 20 years, not 3 months.

Buffet is one of those guys that gets less sexy when volatility is increased, and more realistic when things are boring and people are licking their wounds.

Berkshire is going to be just fine. And they're doing just fine.

Re: 2020 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Letter [pdf]

#15

Post by the-dude »

bedhead wrote: post #6

While I'm not of these meme investors who thinks Buffett is "washed up", I confess that I've increasingly wondered if it's just sorta over. In some sense, it's not his fault. Berkshire has grown so large that it has significant scale problems. I joke that Buffett found the investing equivalent of the Donkey Kong kill screen, he basically broke the game. It's incredible. But there have been self-inflicted issues. The…

Fair enough. But if his letters are not so insightful anymore, whose are?

Re: 2020 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Letter [pdf]

#16

Post by simo7 »

bedhead wrote: post #6

While I'm not of these meme investors who thinks Buffett is "washed up", I confess that I've increasingly wondered if it's just sorta over. In some sense, it's not his fault. Berkshire has grown so large that it has significant scale problems. I joke that Buffett found the investing equivalent of the Donkey Kong kill screen, he basically broke the game. It's incredible. But there have been self-inflicted issues. The…

I'd say he broke his own game of investing, rather than the game in general.

Given what he thinks he understand there's not enough opportunities to allocate this amount of capital.

I guess that's why he hired the two new managers. By the way they did come up with some of the best ideas in recent years like Apple and Snowflake.

Re: 2020 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Letter [pdf]

#17

Post by libertine »

xeromal wrote: post #3

I always love to make sure their site is still bare bones. Love the raw HTML look.

Well I think that's the case when your company has so much notoriety that your website isn't used to sell, or get new clients, or capture/retain the attention of anyone, or try to monetize itself with a user base.

It's basically a place to distribute information about them.

Re: 2020 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Letter [pdf]

#18

Post by dominotw »

bedhead wrote: post #6

While I'm not of these meme investors who thinks Buffett is "washed up", I confess that I've increasingly wondered if it's just sorta over. In some sense, it's not his fault. Berkshire has grown so large that it has significant scale problems. I joke that Buffett found the investing equivalent of the Donkey Kong kill screen, he basically broke the game. It's incredible. But there have been self-inflicted issues. The…

> In some sense, it's not his fault. Berkshire has grown so large that it has significant scale problems.

I hear this often that berkshire isn't what it used to be because of 'scale'. What does this even mean. At what point does it become too big. Is there a general logic that after X billion $$, investment firms become inefficient?

Re: 2020 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Letter [pdf]

#19

Post by GrantZvolsky »

tuna-piano wrote: post #12

Just an interesting sidenote. It does feel like the letter is shorter than it used to be, so I plotted the number of pages by year in the PDF fils on their site. Looks like there was a decrease from 20 pages to 15 starting in 2017. Graph: https://imgur.com/a/TQ2oewY

Your graph could be improved by avoiding interpolation. Interpolation is misleading in this case because the observations are complete without it.

Re: 2020 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Letter [pdf]

#20

Post by dominotw »

simo7 wrote: post #16
bedhead wrote: post #6

While I'm not of these meme investors who thinks Buffett is "washed up", I confess that I've increasingly wondered if it's just sorta over. In some sense, it's not his fault. Berkshire has grown so large that it has significant scale problems. I joke that Buffett found the investing equivalent of the Donkey Kong kill screen, he basically broke the game. It's incredible. But there have been self-inflicted issues. The…

I'd say he broke his own game of investing, rather than the game in general. Given what he thinks he understand there's not enough opportunities to allocate this amount of capital. I guess that's why he hired the two new managers. By the way they did come up with some of the best ideas in recent years like Apple and Snowflake.

> best ideas in recent years like Apple and Snowflake.

Are these really the best ideas. Bought apple only couple of years ago, snowflake was arguably the most hyped stock of all time. I don't see what the insight was here.

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