Hi, Shrewd!        Login  
Shrewd'm.com 
A merry & shrewd investing community
Best Of BRK.ABest OfAll BoardsThe Shrewd’m WeeklyLearn to InvestHow to Become Shrewd
Search
Shrewd'm.com Merry shrewd investors
Search
Best Of BRK.ABest OfAll BoardsThe Shrewd’m WeeklyLearn to InvestHow to Become Shrewd


The week's question
In December 2024, in the thread "Re: BRK: Why Not XOM?", BreckHutHigh asked the members: "What about the long road trips with kids?" This week it is put to everyone again. The button below opens the small thread re-asking it - read what others have said so far, then give your own answer as an ordinary reply.
Answer this questionContinue to Shrewd'mThis note won't appear again
Stocks A to Z / Stocks B / Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A)
Unthreaded | Threaded | Whole Thread (73) |
Author: tedthedog   😊 😞
Number: of 21939 
Subject: Re: Value, when to buy
Date: 07/05/25 11:57 AM
Post New | Post Reply | Report Post | Recommend It!
No. of Recommendations: 19
The devil made me do it, I'm a devil's advocate: "Forget value, just use price. Make a table similar to Jim's."

Below is such a table, I made it using a price-only measure, i.e. no explicit valuation measure is used. It looks pretty similar to Jim's table (and to tables in previous posts where he binned P/B and related this binned ratio to forward returns).


Bin ForwardTwoYearReturn
1 17.8%
2 15.4%
3 13.8%
4 11.4%
5 12.8%
6 12.1%
7 7.9%
8 6.5%
9 5.7%
10 4.1%


To motivate the above table, consider the conventional P/E ratio. For BRK we often use P/B instead of E, where B is book value because book turns out to be a decent surrogate for intrinsic value. Or, get fancier and use Jim's two-and-a-half column valuation figure to stick in the denominator instead of book value. Whatever, stick something in the denominator. The devil told me to stick a price-only measure in the denominator, so the ratio depends only on famously irrational prices i.e. the very thing that value approaches are constructed to avoid.

To make the above table, I used a four year simple moving average (SMA) of BRK price (four years because Jim used 16 quarters to average his two-and-a-half column valuation figure) and I stuck this price SMA in the denominator of P/E for 'E'.
So, the ratio used is
Ratio = Price/SMA
where 'SMA' is a simple moving average of BRK price over the past four years.

I binned this ratio into 10% bins: bin 1 is the 'cheapest' bin i.e. contains the lowest 10% of the Price/SMA values, bin 2 is the next cheapest, and finally bin 10 is the most 'expensive' bin i.e. contains the highest 10% of the ratio's values. The associated return for each bin is the average annualized forward two year price returns within each bin, because Jim used average annualized forward two year returns in his table. I didn't take time to adjust prices for inflation, but I don't think this matters much to the main point of this post. BRK prices are from Yahoo and start 1996-05-09.

CONCLUSION:
The table above looks fairly similar to Jim's table built using his two-and-half-column valuation measure. But the table above was built using the price-only ratio above, which measures how far BRK's current price is above/below its four year simple moving average. No valuation involved. This table has significant predictive power, clearly it's best to buy when BRK is 'cheap' and not so great to buy when BRK is 'expensive', and the average two year forward return pretty much linearly depends on the bin.
Make of it what you will, the devil made made me do it.
Post New | Post Reply | Report Post | Recommend It!
Print the post
Members reply directly to tedthedog here — and replies get answered. Reading is free; so is joining the conversation. Join Shrewd'm »
This community has written 21,448 posts about Berkshire Hathaway. The article-length ones it recommended most:
BRK: Why Not XOM? · 62 recs · 2024
Second quarter comments · 60 recs · 2023
Berkshire's Profit Contributors · 57 recs · 2023
Summary of 2Q 2026 · 54 recs · 2026
3Q Summary · 53 recs · 2024
Unthreaded | Threaded | Whole Thread (73) |


Announcements
Berkshire Hathaway FAQ
Contact Shrewd'm
Contact the developer of these message boards.

Best Of BRK.A | Best Of | Favourites & Replies | All Boards | Followed Shrewds | Open Questions | Moving a community