“Markel BV per share is around $1530. Com­pound at 10% for 10 years = $3970. Apply a 1.45x mul­ti­ple to BV any­where near the end of that pe­riod (not un­re­al­is­tic, as it was aroudn that level as re­cently as Jan 2025), and per share price is some­thing like $5750, a re­spectable 335% re­turn.
  “Berkshire——take $350 BV/ B share, grow at 10% for 10 years, apply a (higher) 1.6x mul­ti­ple, and you get a B share around $1450, 290% re­turn. ... Under these as­sump­tions, you are right that MKL is a po­ten­tially a bet­ter in­vest­ment.”
  Markel might be a mean­ing­fully higher re­turn propo­si­tion for those who might be in­ter­ested in a shorter time frame. Maybe. Con­sider this line of rea­son­ing: There is no par­tic­u­lar rea­son to think that Berk­shire's val­u­a­tion mul­ti­ples will change much from to­day's lev­els, so on­go­ing re­turns will be on the order of value growth. I'd prob­a­bly count on in­fla­tion + 7%/year.
  Markel is a bit less pre­dictable, but let's say that the on-trend value growth might be roughly 1%/year lower. So let's say in­fla­tion + 6%/year. But the val­u­a­tion ap­pears to be quite low at the mo­ment, pre­sum­ably in part be­cause of the ~$200m re­cent hit from bank­ruptcy of a provider they had a fronting busi­ness for (more specif­i­cally be­cause the col­lat­eral turned out to be in­suf­fi­cient as the claims aged). If his­tory is a guide (which it may or may not be), it's likely they'll be trad­ing back at or above 1.4 times book (ver­sus about 1.13 now) within a cou­ple of years. So the in­vest­ment could be thought of as "a one time gain of around 25%, plus inflation+6%/year on your money while you wait."
  Let's say US in­fla­tion is 3.25% in the next few years. Let's say it takes four years to reach the tar­get exit val­u­a­tion rather than two. On those as­sump­tions it's a 75% nom­i­nal re­turn, just over 15%/year com­pounded, about 5.75%/year higher than the Berkshire ex­pec­ta­tion with the as­sump­tions above. So, if your in­vest­ment hori­zon is partly for a trade like this--sell the next time the val­u­a­tion is in the 1.4 to 1.5 P/B range--then pro­vided they don't step in an­other pile of poop be­fore then, the prospec­tive rate of re­turn is quite a lot bet­ter than steady-as-she-goes Berkshire. The dif­fer­ence is the greater safety from Berk­shire's bal­ance sheet, and a greater un­pre­dictabil­ity (though still not that large) of busi­ness re­sults.
  Mod­ify as­sump­tions to suit, but the idea is that a one-time val­u­a­tion pop from a good entry goes a long way if you aren't in­sist­ing on it being a per­ma­nent hold­ing. Jim