Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Stock Underperforms the Most Since 2009

https://www.wsj.com/articles/berkshire-hathaway-posts-29-2-billion-in-quarterly-earnings-11582379630

by thesausageking • 6 years ago

25 22 6 years ago

wsj.com

coder10012• 6 years ago

Isn't investing with Warren a long term play? One year lower is a big deal?

mikkom• 6 years ago

Not down, just lower profit than stock index.

coder10012• 6 years ago

Miss-typed! Thanks for pointing it out.

nodesocket• 6 years ago

We will see BRK performance compared to the S&P with the potential upcoming meltdown of the market due to Coronavirus global slowdown. Futures for Monday looking god-awful. The next 9 months in the market are going to be very interesting (fed decisions, election, lasting effects of virus).

voiper1• 6 years ago

Paywalled for me.

nottorp2• 6 years ago

What are the actual numbers? TFA is paywalled ofc.

fierarul• 6 years ago

It's the first page in the Buffet letter: https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/2019ltr.pdf

fxtentacle• 6 years ago

"underperforms" here means that they only made 11% profit, or something along the lines of 30 billion USD per 3 months.

So this isn't any real-world trouble, nor did anyone actually lose money. It's simply investors feeling frowny because they were hoping for an even higher payout. Poor them :p

nottorp2• 6 years ago

So it underperforms compared to ... having your own money printing operation?

polote2• 6 years ago

The performance of a stock is usually compared to one index, (S&P 500 in that case)

The reasoning is that doing 4% when the market is in average doing 10% it is more or less the same as losing 6%

mikro2nd• 6 years ago

I don't think it's investors feeling grouchy as much as Wall St. reporters who seem unable to write in anything other than garbage language. BH management do not concern themselves with short- or medium-term performance much; eyes fixed firmly on the long term. This is utterly foreign to most finance journos.

If you read Buffet's letter to investors, you'll see him explicitly saying that some years are bound to be less than wonderful, but that over the long run, envestment in BH will do well.

polote2• 6 years ago

I can't read the article but, maybe this could be largely explained as BK almost doesn't invest in tech

wiredfool• 6 years ago

It’s Berkshire Hathaway’s worst year relative to the SP 500 in the last 10, not that it’s underperformed for 10 years.

(Using the metric of stock price, which is basically popularity and over the short term doesn’t necessarily correspond to any actual rationality. Ymmv, the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent, etc)

richardw• 6 years ago

It often underperforms during periods of exuberance. Everyone bleats until there’s a crash, leaving Berkshire as one of the few still above water.

Onanymous• 6 years ago

And so does the Bridgewater to the best of my knowledge. This could mean those guys are hedging too much against the next bubble burst and expect it to come rather sooner then later.

tree3• 6 years ago

Unsurprising. Berkshire is holding a lot of cash, waiting to invest it at a better time.

RickJWagner• 6 years ago

Buffett is notoriously conservative. The current bull market has gone very long. When the pendulum switches back the other way, people will be writing about the genius of Warren Buffett once again.

Buffett's first rule of money: "Don't lose money."

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Stock Underperforms the Most Since 2009

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