Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. on Tuesday agreed to buy Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp., a $34 billion acquisition that if approved will be the biggest in Berkshire’s history. Continue Reading » Buffett Buys Burlington Northern Santa Fe
Warren Buffett had a quick interview with CNBC Becky Quick on Monday following Berkshire’s AGM over the weekend.
Some points from the interview include:
Warren Buffett is optimistic about the U.S. economy over the long term, but has no idea how it will be in the short term. It will ultimately turn; he just don’t know when.
The time to buy stocks is when business sentiment is bad and nobody is buying.
The more cheap things become, the more he will buy. He likes to buy when things are cheap. While it is not the most attractive time now (it was in 1974 and 1975), it is among the more attractive now.
He reads 5 newspapers a day but the future of newspapers companies is very bleak.
The U.S. will need more tax revenue. Countries which has a huge debt always end up inflating their way out of it.
Complete transcripts of the interview can be downloaded here.
It has been some time since my last post. Last weekend, Warren Buffett released his annual letter to shareholders for the 2008 performance of Berkshire. Thought I would do a quick summary here.
The start of the letter shows a comparison of Berkshire versus the S&P. Since 1965, the per-share book value of Berkshire has only gone down twice (on an annual basis). 2001 saw a 6.2% drop while 2008 saw a 9.6% drop. The book value has risen from $19 to $70,530, or 20.3% compounded annually. $2000 invested with Berkshire in 1965 would have grown to almost $7 million today.
I just read an article that Warren Buffett wrote recently in The New York Times. In the article, Warren Buffett mentioned that he is currently putting his own cash into equities. What is his reason for doing so?
In the midst of the financial crisis, Warren Buffett has moved in to buy over a company - at a bargain price.
Constellation Energy, a company which is the nation’s largest competitive supplier of electricity to large commercial and industrial customers and the nation’s largest wholesale power seller, was bought over by MidAmerican Energy Holdings Company, a subsidairy of Berkshire Hathaway.
The purchase was paid for in cash for abuot $4.7 billion, or $26.50 per share. For the record, Constellation’s stock closed at $58.37 last Friday and finished 2007 at $102.53.
Last week, Warren Buffett had an interview at Omaha with (who else) Becky Quick of CNBC. For the transcript and video, you can visit the following pages:
There was one portion which made a great impression on me:
BUFFETT: I mean, if you’ve got a great deal in this country, you don’t have to go to Beijing, you know, or the Middle East to find somebody with money to fund it. It’s like when oil prospectors would come up here from Texas and they’d say, `We got a wonderful deal for you in Texas,’ I always thought, there are all these oil men in Texas, you know, why didn’t they call on them?
QUICK: So you think the sovereign wealth funds are getting the raw end of the deal when they buy into some of the financials?
BUFFETT: I think that they are buying what is being sold to them, and in securities you should not buy what’s being sold to you. You should buy what comes from your own analysis and looks the cheapest. The idea that somebody is going to come and call on you and say, you know, `Buy $2 billion worth–this is the best thing to buy in the world,’ it isn’t the best thing to buy in the world.
The best thing to buy in the world is something that you’ve dug out and that people aren’t talking about and that, you know, you find yourself. Securities that are being sold to you have a special push in it. Usually, there’s extra commissions in them or all kinds of things. So I don’t–I don’t want to get ideas from other people, basically. I want to get ideas from a bunch of facts that I uncover someplace.
Moral of this story: Always do your own homework when it comes to investing!
I haven’t had time to update the blog for sometime as I was overseas for a short while.
Thought I drop in for a quick update of an event that’s happening in Singapore.
Robert Miles, an expert on Warren Buffett, will be in Singapore to give a couple of talks at the Invest Fair 08. This event will be held over the coming weekend at Suntec Convention Center.
For more details about this event, you can refer to the Invest Fair website.
