No. of Recommendations: 23
not a screaming buy in terms of PB ratio.
The price has gone down in the last year, and the value has gone up, so things are lot more attractive than they were. Aside from transient short term squiggles, I would expect Berkshire shares to outperform cash in the next year.
Back of the envelope:
Maybe nominal value growth of 10.5% in the next year? Real growth of 6.5%-7.5%, plus inflation of 3-4%?
Boring old P/B is 1.43. If it drops to a modern-era typical 1.4, that's a drop of only -2.1%, leaving you with a plausible expectation of in the range of nominal 8.4%.
One year T-bills are paying nominal 3.8%. That's a whole lot lower than 8.4%, so my back of the envelope could be off by quite a bit and Berkshire would still be the better bet.
That envelope calculus of course assumes that the market is "typical" a year from now. We might see a financial disaster, or we might see stocks go to the moon. Nobody knows. But it's reasonable to think that a positive year is more likely than a negative year from here.
Jim
