Subject: Re: Future growth
Berkshire is principally a collection of dozens of operating companies driven by its best-on-planet Insurance operations.

I'd have no problem Indexing the stock portfolio or mirroring it as best as possible over time given the obvious tax consequences. Or if we want to keep what we got intact--that's OK. It's just not the key for Berkshire going forward imo. I don't think stocks will be a lot smaller than cash--as they are now. But they will NOT be nearly as important as in the past. I'll take being in the top 1/4th or 1/5th or so where the index or index hugging gets you.

THE KEY DRIVERS: Insurance float will continue to provide cheaper than free cost leverage -and the op cos, if run effectively should, hopefully, marginally outperform the index. That should be Abels focus and he's the right guy at the right time!. Thats the hope and really that's what matters in the Berkshire that Buffett has designed this century.


I think a key metric is how much excess cash the operating companies are generating that could be used for additional investment. This also assumes that we still believe that market beating returns can be generated from those investment opportunities - at the scale that would be required. I have no doubt that on a $10B base they could easily beat the market - but on $100B less sure.



tecmo
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