Berkshire Hathaway - thoughts?

Prism

sebtomato said:
So what are the better funds/fund manager? First, people say there are many fund managers that can beat a S&P500 tracker, and those are "easy to identify".

But then, when we ask for some more specific answers, nothing...

Well in the context of this thread - Buffet and Berkshire Hathaway seem to have been good choices.

tebbins

sebtomato said:

Prism said:

sebtomato said:

Prism said:

sebtomato said:

Prism said:

sebtomato said:

aroominyork said:

	1 year	3 years	5 years	10 years
Berkshire Hathaway	20%	52%	99%	408%
North America	6%	45%	80%	280%
Global	-1%	32%	54%	175%

47% in Apple and most of the rest in Bank of America, Coca-Cola, American Express and Kraft Heinz is conviction investing on steroids, but they seem to know what they are doing.

Warren Buffet has advised people to get an S&P500 tracker instead of Berkshire Hathaway shares, so his confidence that the good past performance will be repeated in the future is low.

What he said was that the majority of people should get an S&P 500 tracker. He does not follow that advice himself of course and as it happens Berkshire shares have outperformed the S&P 500 from when he gave this advice. Most people are not good investors - he, however is.

Not sure what your point is. Yes, he is a very good investor, and the OP, you or me are surely not.

Don't take it personally: on the basis that most active funds get beaten by passive, tracking funds, most fund managers are not great investors either.

You seem to suggest that he was not confident that the past performance of Berkshire would not be repeated. I imagine he is very confident that it will be over time - else why do it. I would say that most active managers are confident in that too, although as you point out, very few of them are able to achieve that. Not impossible though to select the better ones.

Who are the better ones then? Warren Buffet (who just said the stock market in the last 2 years has been a casino, and advising people to buy S&P500 trackers)? Woodford? 

At the end of the day, betting on a fund manager is random and usually based on past performance, so people are better off buying trackers and save on paying large fees to those managers (who still get paid, whether their funds goes up or down).

Rather than drag this into a generic active vs passive fund discussion lets stick with Warren Buffet. Will Berkshire perform better than the general market going forwards? Also will it do so with lower volatility as it avoids the more frothy areas of the market and also is made up of private and fully owned companies in addition to the public market holdings? I believe in both cases it will. They have proved over many years that they are great investors in companies and along the way have influenced many others to become better investors. 

If you gave me a choice between an S&P 500 tracker and Berkshire shares I would choose Berkshire shares every time. Regardless, I don't actually use either as I prefer a more global portfolio.

So what are the better funds/fund manager? First, people say there are many fund managers that can beat a S&P500 tracker, and those are "easy to identify".

But then, when we ask for some more specific answers, nothing...

There are ways you can offer opinions about a given fund or stock. I avoid anything with hype, a cult following or fandom, anything that spends too much on advertising or makes bold claims, anything that uses overly simplistic marketing, anything that says "ask your financial advisor about..." (Saw a RL ad like that a while ago), anything too concentrated, too illiquid, or anything where it's even remotely hard to find the information I need that actually matters in between fluff.
The S&P500 is one index, in the most researched market in the world with little to no opportunity for price discovery left. If you read the SPIVA reports for UK equity you will see that UK managers are much less bad at keeping up with UK indices than elsewhere, supporting Gervais William's "investing miles" concept that the Jones from Sunderland know how to run a McDonald's franchise in Gateshead better than they would know how to the Thrangs Vietnamese restaurant in Ho Chi Minh (buy what you know). There is far more to investing for UK residents than one index dominated by hot 'tech' i.e. media and consumer discretionary companies trading at bubble valuations.
Buffett himself has summarised it beautifully, if you don't know how to invest, you are who index funds are for, if you do, index funds are still an option.
I like food and traveling, when I go places I don't go to the "index" restaurant McDonald's, nor do I have one bite from every restaurant in the city, each bite weighted proportionate to the restaurant's sales.
Also, no one investor is under any obligation to be perfectly logical and rational in their behaviour, even if it were accepted that index funds (next question, WHICH index funds tracking which indices?!?) were objectively the optimal solution for them.