Berkshire Hathaway

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#11
Quote:By early March, when he started buying the stock, the shares had risen more than 25 per cent from their most recent low of six months previously. Even the stock's lowest point during the third quarter, when Mr Buffett built the rest of his stake, was one of its highest levels ever.

If you look purely at the stock chart, the price point at which guru Buffett entered does not look like the act of a typical value investor. He bought near an all-time high (not just a 52-week high or multi-year high but an all-time high). On the growth side, IBM looks reasonably good for a huge company with a 3-year EPS growth rate of 15%. Like Buffett said, value and growth are joined at the hip. But to buy it at an all-time high? Buffett certainly must have good reasons to do so. I am just surprised that a person who shuns technology all his life can have the knowledge and confidence to buy a giant, complex tech stock at an all-time high. At an all-time high, the margin of safety is little. Buffett is placing his bet based on what he sees in the future, something which only industry veterans can do with better odds. I cannot help but respect this fellow.

As a short-term play this year, IBM did very well relative to the market. As of last night, the gain so far this year is 29%. Not bad for someone who claims to ignore market fluctuations and eschews market timing.
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#12
Berkshire Takes Stakes in Visa, Intel as Combs Buys Shares

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK/A) took stakes in CVS Caremark Corp., Intel Corp. (INTC) and Visa Inc. (V) as investment manager Todd Combs builds his portfolio.

Buffett’s firm also had holdings of DirecTV (DTV) and General Dynamics Corp. (GD), the maker of Gulfstream business jets and Abrams tanks, Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire said today in a regulatory filing today listing U.S. equity holdings as of Sept. 30. Berkshire reported an increase in its Dollar General Corp. stake and a decline in its holding of Johnson & Johnson.

Buffett and Combs drew down Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire’s cash hoard in the three months ended Sept. 30 as U.S. stocks headed for their biggest quarterly decline since 2008. Buffett, 81, said earlier today that he bought more than $10 billion of stock in International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) this year, with most of the purchases made in the third quarter.

“American companies look very cheap compared to investment alternatives,” Buffett said today in a CNBC interview.

Berkshire invested $23.9 billion in the third quarter as Buffett, the chief executive officer, acquired Lubrizol Corp., took a preferred stake in Bank of America Corp. and broadened the stock portfolio. Buffett has accumulated the biggest stakes in Coca-Cola Co. and Wells Fargo & Co. in his more than four decades running Berkshire. Combs, 40, is assembling a group of stock picks of his own after being hired by Berkshire last year to take smaller stakes than Buffett.

Berkshire held 5.66 million shares of CVS Caremark Corp. (CVS), the largest U.S. provider of prescription drugs, valued at $190 million as of Sept. 30. The 2.29 million-share holding of Visa, the world’s biggest payments network, was valued at about $196 million.

The stakes in satellite television provider DirecTV, chipmaker Intel and General Dynamics were all valued at between $170 million and $200 million as of Sept. 30, according to the filing. Shares of each of Berkshire’s new holdings have advanced this quarter.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-14...folio.html

See their Q3 filings with the SEC here,

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-14...alert.html
Luck & Fortune Favours those who are Prepared & Decisive when Opportunity Knocks
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#13
2011 Annual Report http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/2011ar/...ual11.html
2011 Shareholder Letter http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/2011ltr.pdf

Vested.
Specuvestor: Asset - Business - Structure.
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#14
Berkshire 1Q2012 results are out: http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1...258446.htm

Highlights:
- Insurance business has normalized somewhat after disastrous FY2011. By disastrous I mean 2011 was full of natural disasters that affected BRK's catastrophe insurance business.
- Book value per Class 'A' share equivalent rises to $106,588 per share.
- Gains in book value largely due to increase in net change in unrealized appreciation of investments; equivalent to "fair value gains in available-for-sale financial assets" in Singapore's context.
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#15
Hope Lawrence A Cunningham will do another compilation of his letters soon.
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#16
BRK buys HNZ.

http://news.heinz.com/press-release/fina...-3g-capita

By my calculations, BRK is paying about 14.5 times pre-tax income, the highest multiple paid as far as I can remember.
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#17
As always, a must-read.
2012 Shareholder Letters is out : http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/2012ltr.pdf
Specuvestor: Asset - Business - Structure.
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#18
He recommended 2 rather unique books that look really interesting.

The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success
http://www.amazon.com/The-Outsiders-Unco...utsiders#_

Investing between the line - How to Make Smarter Decisions By Decoding CEO Communications
http://www.amazon.com/Investing-Between-...ween+the#_

Investing between the line seemed rather cool in teaching about analysing the language and communication style of the CEO especially in annual report. It has really good review too.
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#19
(02-03-2013, 11:08 AM)shanrui_91 Wrote: He recommended 2 rather unique books that look really interesting.

The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success
http://www.amazon.com/The-Outsiders-Unco...utsiders#_

Investing between the line - How to Make Smarter Decisions By Decoding CEO Communications
http://www.amazon.com/Investing-Between-...ween+the#_

Investing between the line seemed rather cool in teaching about analysing the language and communication style of the CEO especially in annual report. It has really good review too.

2 more good books to read, will put them into my reading list. Thanks
“夏则资皮,冬则资纱,旱则资船,水则资车” - 范蠡
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#20
(02-03-2013, 11:08 AM)shanrui_91 Wrote: Investing between the line - How to Make Smarter Decisions By Decoding CEO Communications
http://www.amazon.com/Investing-Between-...ween+the#_

Investing between the line seemed rather cool in teaching about analysing the language and communication style of the CEO especially in annual report. It has really good review too.

I bought this book online just yesterday morning.
Visit my personal investing blog at http://financiallyfreenow.wordpress.com now!
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