I have to agree that the current price isn't really a very good measure of whether the Occidental investment will turn out to have been a good play. It's fun to pull up a chart to see how long the Washington Post price kept falling and languishing after Berkshire bought it. Years.

But this part is an interesting question---
Buffett’s behavior meanwhile has been perplexing. Berkshire Hathaway was a steady buyer of the stock from March 2022 through June 2024, often paying around $60 a share.

I don't think (?) there are issues with the various types of constraints arising from the percentage of ownership, at least not yet.
I can see only two plausible explanations.
* One is that Mr Buffett had a position size in mind and, having reached it, he stopped buying. The fact that the price got lower later is just transient bad luck.
* The other is the more obvious interpretation: he is no longer as keen on the firm as he was, for some unknowable reason. Not put off enough to sell, but put off enough not to want more.

I guess a distant third is that he *really* wants a lot of cash in hand for optionality, figuring that so many things are so expensive (a situation which never lasts forever) that surely some better deal will come along sooner or later.


Jim