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.
2018-09-25 10:35:00 Tuesday ET

Sirius XM pays $3.5 billion shares to acquire the music app company Pandora. This acquisition would form the largest audio entertainment company worldwide.
2019-04-01 08:28:00 Monday ET

OraSure and its subsidiary DNA Genotek specialize in the lean production of home DNA spit tubes. OraSure extracts core genetic information from microbiome s
2027-01-31 12:25:00 Sunday ET

In recent decades, many governments have chosen to run high fiscal deficits on top of sovereign debt mountains so that greater government intervention still
2018-10-15 09:33:00 Monday ET

Several pharmaceutical companies now switch their primary focus from generic prescription drugs to medical specialties such as cardiovascular medications an
2018-11-09 11:35:00 Friday ET

The Internet inventor Tim Berners-Lee suggests that several tech titans might need to be split up in response to some recent data breach and privacy concern
2023-05-21 12:26:00 Sunday ET

Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld suggest that relatively successful ethnic groups exhibit common cultural traits in America. Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld (2015)