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.
2019-10-11 13:40:00 Friday ET

Apple CEO Tim Cook maintains a frugal low-key lifestyle. With $625 million public wealth, Cook leads the $1 trillion tech titan Apple in the post-Jobs era.
2023-05-28 10:24:00 Sunday ET

Thomas Piketty connects the dots between economic growth and inequality worldwide with long-term global empirical evidence. Thomas Piketty (2017) &nbs
2023-10-28 12:29:00 Saturday ET

Paul Morland suggests that demographic changes lead to modern economic growth in the current world. Paul Morland (2019) The human tide: how
2024-04-30 09:30:00 Tuesday ET

With clean and green energy resources and electric vehicles, the global auto industry now navigates at a newer and faster pace. Both BYD and Tesla have
2018-12-22 14:38:00 Saturday ET

Federal Reserve raises the interest rate to the target range of 2.25% to 2.5% as of December 2018. Fed Chair Jerome Powell highlights the dovish interest ra
2019-10-09 16:46:00 Wednesday ET

IMF chief economist Gita Gopinath indicates that competitive currency devaluation may be an ineffective solution to improving export prospects. In the form