Ben Gilbert: uncertainty

Transcript context

…This dichotomy between how Warren is perceived and wants to be perceived and how he actually is. He's got that line about Charlie and I have never had an argument. Bullshit, you’ve never had an argument. I bet you had one after that. But of course, they still love each other and Greg will be the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. We should say to that a thing that's been happening quietly in the background—two things. Ted and Todd have been running their portfolios in a very different way than Warren has over the years. I think Todd, and I don't know this for sure but, was really buying Amazon, SnowFlake, some of these tech stocks other than Apple, so you have a non-Warren approved strategy going on there. Especially the Snow Flake deal, buying those pre-IPO shares and benefiting from that is very interesting. Then also, stock buybacks. It's very clear that what's happening is that they don't see a better opportunity out there in the market to deploy capital than the businesses they already own. They'd rather just take everybody’s shares and concentrate their positions in the existing Berkshire portfolio. I thought Christopher Bloomstran had a great quote in the Semper Augustus Investments Group letter that he writes that is epic. It is a full analysis of the accounting practices and valuation model for Berkshire. He has this great quote, as long as capital markets remain overvalued and private investors flush with cash persist in investing at low yields, share repurchases are a magnificent use of capital. It really is such a good point that you pick your head up, you look around, everything's got a sky high multiple on it. Berkshire shares at least the way that Warren sees it don't. They don't.…

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