저자: 미상 · 외국인
요약 보기
버크셔 해서웨이 현금·단기자산 3000억 달러 이상(총자산의 약 27%, 25년 평균 13% 대비 높음). 버핏은 시장 예측은 무의미하다며 기회가 올 때까지 현금을 보유하겠다고 말함. 영상 진행자는 버핏이 약 100억 달러 투자를 고려한 대상이 알파벳(구글)일 것이라고 추정하며, 당시 주가 약 145달러, PER 약 16배, 지분율 4.7% 등을 근거로 제시함.
다듬은 글
This next question comes from Advate Prasad in New York. He writes, "Today, Berkshire holds over $300 billion in cash and short-term investments, representing about 27% of total assets, a historically high figure compared to the 13% average over the last 25 years. This has also led Berkshire to effectively own nearly 5% of the entire US Treasury market.
Beyond the need for liquidity to meet insurance obligations, is the decision to raise cash primarily a d-risking strategy in response to high market valuations? Or is it also a deliberate effort to position Birkshshire's balance sheet for a smooth smoother leadership transition, providing Greg Ael with maximum flexibility and a clean slate for future capital allocation decisions?
And I will add one line from another shareholder, Mike Conway, who asks, "Are you encouraged you may see some fat pitches coming your way?" Yeah. Well, I wouldn't do anything nearly so noble as to withhold investing myself just so that Greg could look good later on. Now, if he if he gets any edge of what I believe, I'll resent it.
So, the uh now the the amount of cash we have is we we we would spend well, we came pretty close to spending 10 billion not that long ago, for example, but we'd spend a hundred billion. I mean, and and those decisions are not tough to make. uh when when something is offered that is that uh makes sense to us and that we understand and uh offers good value and where we don't worry about losing and the one problem with the investment business is that things don't come along in an orderly fashion and they never will.
I mean, it isn't like every day. Uh, you know, the the long-term record is sensational, but that is not a product. And I've been in, let's see, I've had um 200 trading days times 80 years. Yeah, but at uh 16 million trading days had been we kind of uh uh I mean 16,000 trading days. It it would be nice if every day you got four opportunities or something like that and you know you could and they were expected to be equally attractive.
you know, if I if I was running a numbers racket, you know, every day would have the same expectancy of that I would keep 40% of whatever the handle was. And so the only question would be is how much we transacted. But we're not running that kind of a business. And so we're running a business which is very very opportunistic.
And uh Charlie always thought I did too many things. uh he thought if we did about five things in our lifetime, we we could we could uh we'd end up doing better than if we did 50 and and uh and that we never concentrated enough. Uh so that we would rather have if we've got 335 billion now in treasuries, we would rather have conditions that have developed where we would have like 50 billion or something like that.
But that that just isn't the way the business works. And we have made a lot of money by not wanting to be fully invested at all times. And uh um we don't think it's improper actually for people who are passive investors just to make a few simple investments and sit with their life uh sit for their life and um but we've made the decision to be in the business.
So uh we think we can do a little better than that by behaving in a very irregular manner. But if you told me that I had to invest uh well our let's say that we have a roughly 40 billion a year coming in and we start with 335. If you told me I had to invest 50 billion every year till we got down to 50 billion, that would be the dumbest thing in the world to invest in that manner.
Things get extraordinarily attractive very occasionally. The long-term trend is up. Nobody knows. And uh I certainly don't know. Greg doesn't know. A doesn't know. Nobody knows what the market is going to do tomorrow, next week, next month. Nobody knows what business is going to do tomorrow, next week or next month.
But they spend all their time talking about it because it's it's easy to talk about and uh but it it it has no value. Uh I've never found anybody I wanted to listen to on the subject. And uh the on the other hand, I found the leafing through things like that big Japanese book that I can't read anymore.
Uh the uh it's it's a that's a treasure hunt. And every now and then you find something and occasionally, very occasionally, but it'll happen again that uh I don't know when it won't. It could be next week. It could be 5 years off, but it won't be 50 years off. He will have we will be bombarded with offerings that that uh we'll be glad we have the cash for.
And it'd be a lot more fun if it would happen tomorrow, but it's very unlikely to happen tomorrow. Very very unlikely to happen tomorrow, but it's not unlikely to happen in 5 years. And then it gets the probabilities get higher as you go along. It's kind of like death. I mean, if you're 10 years old, the chances that you're going to die the next day are low.
Get to be 115 or something like that. It's almost a cinch. Uh, particularly if you're a male. I mean, all the records are held by females in terms of age. And uh I tried to get Charlie to have a sex change so he could test out whether uh he did pretty well for being a male. I'll put it that way. Okay.
What about you? What do you think was the company Warren Buffett was talking about when he said that he was about to invest $10 billion? 10 billion is enough to put this investment into the top five holdings of Berser. So me personally, I think he was talking about Alphabet. Not too long ago, we've seen this stock around $145 per share.
And not only was the P ratio of Alphabet around 16 times earnings, which is pretty similar to when he started buying Apple. But furthermore, Google's owners was around 4.7%. And usually if we look at the other top holdings of Berser Haway, he buys the stock when it gets over 5% owners. I believe that's the reason he really didn't pull the trigger.
We've seen countless interviews in which Warren Buffett talks about how brilliant of a company Alphabet is and how much he regrets not having invested in it, especially when the founders came to visit him in person. And lastly, if we take a look at his behavior when he started buying Apple in 2016, he also started with a position really close to 10 billion.
But I want to hear your guys' thoughts. Was he really talking about Google? Do you know if there's any other company that might be more interesting for Warren Buffett for his value investing type of approach? I'm looking forward to reading your comments. And as always, I'll see you in the next
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