TB:" batten down the hatches!! "
yeah, Buffett is an interesting story... obsessive drive to accumulate with no joy to spend; reminds me of my Scottish family's roots, fwiw (^_^)
Very interesting was learning how personally vulnerable he is/feels; his relationship with his wife and other companion; and so on.
I think many of Buffet's acquisitions were just silly; I don't admire him for what he buys, Berney. Rather, what is most interesting to me (and probably you, as well) is the unique financial structure of (Berkshire Hathaway) his buying machine : ie., insurance company cash cows feeding bonds, re-directed to equities, within a closely-held holding company, sold back to the public not unlike a closed-end fund... Original "investors", then, are replaced by companies and individuals who buy insurance, rather than equity (insurance being a simple actuarial/statistical game whereby the "house" cannot lose).
His obsession to "never sell", expressed as a kind of touchy-feely investment doctrine - boils down to nothing more than the avoidance of distributions, capital gains taxes... he must, then - buy companies that simply grow without risk of fundamental change - save the stepwise benefits of productivity naturally realized by economy of scale.
Were he young, able to do it all over again - I suspect that he would simply feed surplus capital from his erstaz "estate" of cash-cows into leveraged and hedged indices.
I believe too much emphasis is put on Buffett as a "stock picker", too little on his genius for financial structure: when it comes to Buffett-ology, we overlook the obvious, imho.
-Steve |
