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Warren Buffett steps down as Berkshire Hathaway CEO after six decades

latimes.com

51–60 of 612 posts

Re: Warren Buffett steps down as Berkshire Hathaway CEO after six decades

#51
post #3

I will never undertand this people that live all their life working, when they clearly have the chance to retire much sooner. I will retire right away if I had 10 millions. Maybe 50 millions if I was younger than 40.

Their work is their enjoyment. Buffett would've been investing even in "retirement," so to him, work and retirement are functionally the same.

This.

The work/retirement dichotomy is such a weird and peculiar artifact of the 1950s US middle-class nuclear-family milieu.

That's gone.

For the rest of us, it's just...live your life, until you don't.

(viz. Below the fold: "Buffett remains as chair...")

Re: Warren Buffett steps down as Berkshire Hathaway CEO after six decades

#53

I just asked ChatGPT what Warren Buffett's strategy is, and it said buying undervalued companies and holding for a long time. Is that true? I thought it's not a good idea to buy loser companies.

He calls them "cigar butts." His analogy is that you collect enough of them, and you have a whole cigar.

Re: Warren Buffett steps down as Berkshire Hathaway CEO after six decades

#54
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“in the short run, the market is a voting machine… but in the long run, the market is a weighing machine.” Ben Graham

It seems like something is broken since TSLA (for example) has been completely divorced from fundamentals since at least 2020. The richest man in the world has the vast majority of his net worth derived from vaporware and straight up fraud. Still wondering when the "weighing machine" kicks in.

Unfortunately it's expensive to short Tesla because Elon and Peter Thiel don't allow their shares to be shorted. Add to that, it's part of the S&P 500. It's going to take a while but I foresee a lot of red for TSLA. We'll see what happens but TSLA is already revising their target of cars sold in Q4

Re: Warren Buffett steps down as Berkshire Hathaway CEO after six decades

#55

Driving 7 minutes to work and stopping at a drive-thru to pick up McDonalds breakfast every day. The man is a true American hero.

Sorry, a person who life is built around greed is no hero.

Actualy, he didn't. He's probably the one billionaire alive today for which you could not make that case. I know of one other (but he's dead).

Re: Warren Buffett steps down as Berkshire Hathaway CEO after six decades

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, a person who life is built around greed is no hero.

Actualy, he didn't. He's probably the one billionaire alive today for which you could not make that case. I know of one other (but he's dead).

> He's probably the one billionaire alive today for which you could not make that case.

Is this Stockholm Syndrome?

Re: Warren Buffett steps down as Berkshire Hathaway CEO after six decades

#57

I read somewhere that Bershire Hathaway had sort of finished it's mission. 40 years ago there were lots of large companies who were very 'inefficient' and BH would come along, invest a lot, and start demanding changes. Company performance would improve and BH would make big $$$$. Now there are few of these and it is hard to do. I don't know enough to know whether it is right or wrong. but I think that is what I read.

Isn't that the model of every private equity? It was always hard to do well.

Although it doesn't seem that way, there are lot of companies that have become large recently, it is best time ever historically for companies to be able to grow large quickly much more so than 50 years ago in the early days of BH.

There are 1000+ unicorns today, about 50 of the fortune 500 are founded > 2000, a large number of companies that have chosen to remain private with revenues in excess of >$10B like Stripe or SpaceX etc

While it is true that lot of the action has been in sectors BH has never been comfortable holding large assets in such as SaaS, new fin-tech(i.e. crypto etc), or gig econ(Airbnb/Uber etc), social media(tiktok et al.) etc, that doesn't mean the principles are no longer needed or there aren't opportunities to take stake in these now mature companies and drive value.

Re: Warren Buffett steps down as Berkshire Hathaway CEO after six decades

#59
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm at that point now, debating when I'll retire. We only live once and I'm not sure if I should continue working. I've reached financial freedom at a pretty young age. It's a daily debate in my mind when to call it quits, but I've never not worked and it's difficult to make the change. What I'm missing in life is time and that's what work takes from me and is the driving force behind my desire to retire -- time to d…

If you don’t have family or kids do not stop working.

I have a wife and two kids. That's one reason I still work (it's probably not a good example for the kids to see a father not working)

Re: Warren Buffett steps down as Berkshire Hathaway CEO after six decades

#60
post #3

I will never undertand this people that live all their life working, when they clearly have the chance to retire much sooner. I will retire right away if I had 10 millions. Maybe 50 millions if I was younger than 40.

Work life is quite a lot different for a working-stiff than it is for a CEO. In large part, their company is an extension of themselves. Work whatever hours you want to. Private plane to take you wherever you want to go for free, if you can come up with a work-related excuse to go there (with no need to justify not coming back for weeks). Multiple folks acting more-or-less as your personal assistants. An office bigge…

Based on this description, you could say that what the CEO does in no way resembles what real work looks like for 90% of the population. Which I think is true. It's a pity they make so much more than people who do actual work.
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