Value Investing News - ir - Comments

Thanks, I wanted to mention

Nick — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 10:21:17 -0500

Thanks, I wanted to mention Lou Simpson, but for the life of me couldn't remember his name even though I was fortunate enough to meet him at the annual meeting once.

True

Geoff — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 00:02:08 -0500

While Berkshire's holdings are often reported as if they are all Buffett's decisions alone (which is unwarranted), there are some buys where it's pretty clear he's the one making the decisions – Berkshire's activities in USG and WFC would fall into this category of decisions clearly attributable to Buffett.

Lou Simpson is also a truly great investor – so Berkshire's activities are worth paying attention to regardless of who made the pick.

Additionally, Berkshire

Nick — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 23:03:37 -0500

Additionally, Berkshire filing also represent purchases made by Geico- those investments are not directed by Buffett. That said, they tend to be great investments as well.

Buffett and Small Holdings

Geoff — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 17:24:39 -0500

Also, it's always worth keeping in mind that Buffett has a real aversion to retaining small holdings. As he's admitted before, he's sometimes started to buy a stock only to sell it later because he didn't get enough of it.

In smaller stocks, he seems to be willing to have a relatively small position because that's all he can hope to get and he comes into it knowing that. For instance, he knows USG (USG) can't be a huge position relative to Berkshire's other holdings, but Berkshire can be a large holder of USG.

Although Berkshire will hold stocks for a very long time, some new (smaller) positions can disappear surprisingly fast. Sometimes I think that means Buffett would have kept buying if the stock had kept falling, but for whatever reason Berkshire didn't get as much as Buffett wanted (at the price he wanted) so he began to consider exiting the position. He really thinks differently than most portfolio managers on the issue of concentration. I don't think he likes owning just a "smidge" of Lowe's (LOW), UPS (UPS), etc.

The one purchase that stood out to me in the last year or so was ConocoPhillips (COP) since it was big enough to make it well into Berkshire's top dozen or so holdings.

Anyway, I just thought it was worth mentioning that we shouldn't assume that a relatively small position (both relative to Berkshire's other holdings and relative to the market cap of the stock being purchased) reflects Buffett's original intent. In the past, he has stopped buying or exited a stock after failing to acquire enough to make it one of Berkshire's top holdings – he has occasionally admitted to past instances of this himself (usually when saying he made a mistake by failing to continue buying shares in a good company even as its price rose). My guess is that this has happened a few times already and is likely to become an ever more frequent occurrence considering the size of Berkshire's cash hoard.

In the associated article I

wax — Sat, 17 Feb 2007 06:04:50 -0500

In the associated article I noted the following comment:

"I believe the sale of Target and continued holding of Wal-Mart Stores (WMT) indicates that Mr. Buffett does not believe Target has a durable competitive advantage over Wal-Mart."

Perhaps whomever made the comment should take a broader look at what, to my mind, Mr. Buffet appears to be doing, which is retaining stocks and increasing positions in stocks he believes will do well should the economy head south.

Recent articls by BCA Research have contained comments that business profit growth is pulling back and that the economy is slowing.

So assuming that what the article said Mr. Buffet was buying and selling is correct, I don't think Mr. Buffet favors Wal-Mart over Target as much as he is hedging his investments against what he believes will be a downturn in the economy and the markets.

Wax