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.
2018-12-29 09:32:00 Saturday ET

Andy Yeh Alpha (AYA) AYA Analytica financial health memo (FHM) podcast channel on YouTube December 2018 AYA Analytica is our online regular podcast and news
2021-05-20 10:30:00 Thursday ET

Artificial intelligence, 5G, and virtual reality can help transform global trade, finance, and technology. Core trade technological advances and disruptive
2017-11-29 07:42:00 Wednesday ET

The octogenarian billionaire and activist investor Carl Icahn mulls over steps to shake up the board of SandRidge Energy after the oil-and-gas company adopt
2017-01-11 11:38:00 Wednesday ET

Thomas Piketty's recent new book *Capital in the Twenty-First Century* frames income and wealth inequality now as a global economic phenomenon. When
2018-04-29 13:44:00 Sunday ET

College education offers a hefty 8.8% pay premium for each marginal increase in the number of years of intellectual attainment in contrast to the 5.6%-6% lo
2019-01-23 11:32:00 Wednesday ET

Higher public debt levels, global interest rate hikes, and subpar Chinese economic growth rates are the major risks to the world economy from 2019 to 2020.