2019-04-07 13:39:00 Sun ET
stock market gold oil stock return s&p 500 asset market stabilization asset price fluctuations stocks bonds currencies commodities funds term spreads credit spreads fair value spreads asset investments
CNBC news anchor Becky Quick interviews Warren Buffett in early-2019. Buffett explains the fact that book value fluctuations are a metric that has lost relevance for Berkshire Hathaway over time. At least 3 circumstances lead to this outcome. First, Berkshire has gradually morphed from a company whose assets concentrate in marketable stocks into a unique public corporation whose major value resides in operating businesses. From a fundamental viewpoint, equity stakes represent key parts of corporate stock ownership and control as investors favor liquidity over managerial rent protection.
Second, the new U.S. accounting rules require the current collection of operating companies to be part of book value at a dollar sum far below their current market value. This gross undervaluation may mislead the typical retail investor.
Third, it is likely for Berkshire to reconsider significant share repurchases that take place at share prices above book value (but below the Buffett estimate of intrinsic value). Each share buyback boosts intrinsic value and also constrains the potential uptick of book value.
This combination of circumstances causes the book-value scorecard to become out of touch with economic reality. Buffett hence focuses on the Berkshire market capitalization, and this alternative better reflects business performance in practice.
If any of our AYA Analytica financial health memos (FHM), blog posts, ebooks, newsletters, and notifications etc, or any other form of online content curation, involves potential copyright concerns, please feel free to contact us at service@ayafintech.network so that we can remove relevant content in response to any such request within a reasonable time frame.
2025-07-05 11:23:00 Saturday ET

Former New York Times science author and Harvard psychologist Daniel Goleman explains why working with emotional intelligence helps hone our social skills f
2019-03-19 12:35:00 Tuesday ET

U.S. tech titans increasingly hire PhD economists to help solve business problems. These key tech titans include Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Apple,
2018-07-17 08:35:00 Tuesday ET

Henry Paulson and Timothy Geithner (former Treasury heads) and Ben Bernanke (former Fed chairman) warn that people seem to have forgotten the lessons of the
2023-03-07 11:29:00 Tuesday ET

Former Bank of England Governor Mervyn King provides his deep substantive analysis of the Global Financial Crisis of 2008-2009. Mervyn King (2017) &nb
2018-04-02 07:33:00 Monday ET

China President Xi JinPing tries to ease trade tension between America and China in his presidential address at the annual Boao forum. In his vulnerable att
2019-10-17 08:35:00 Thursday ET

The European Central Bank expects to further reduce negative interest rates with new quantitative government bond purchases. The ECB commits to further cutt