No. of Recommendations: 19
" Berkshire is a big position in cap weighted indexes which have been rising strongly, so it's tracking the market exactly as you'd expect. No mystery at all. There is no evidence whatsoever of a particular fondness for Berkshire shares this year, relative to anything else."
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What? How much is brkb up YTD? How much are the top 10 in the spy up YTD? What about the other 490 stocks? Thanks.
The S&P 500 is up 17.6% year to date including reinvested dividends.
As has been widely commented, a lot of that is due to the very strong performance of a few very large firms. The average S&P 500 firm is up 10.8% (the equal weight index total return).
Berkshire is up 13.4%, between the two. Nothing particularly evident in the way of company-specific exuberance, nor pessimism.
Of course, all of those figures above are measured in US dollars, which have shrunk a lot this year. (the US dollar index has fallen from 108.5 to 99.51 year to date).
Measured on a trade weighted basis, a much better approximation of the true general purpose purchasing power value of a shareholding--
S&P 500 up 7.9% including dividends
S&P equal weight up 1.6% including dividends
Berkshire up 4.0%
FWIW, in euros the average S&P 500 firm is down -0.7% year to date including dividends.
Despite all the Sturm und Drang along the way, it hasn't been a very noteworthy end result, all things considered.
Jim
