
Warren Buffett traded Goldman Sachs for gold - leorio
https://fortune.com/2020/08/14/warren-buffett-goldman-sachs-gold-berkshire-hathaway-portfolio-occidental-stock-wells-fargo-jp-morgan-kroger/
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miles
Surprising move from the man who said something along the lines of[1]:

"Gold gets dug out of the ground in Africa, or some place. Then we melt it
down, dig another hole, bury it again and pay people to stand around guarding
it. It has no utility. Anyone watching from Mars would be scratching their
head."

[1] [https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/05/25/bury-
gold/](https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/05/25/bury-gold/)

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soulofmischief
Buffet was commenting on the social absurdity of the situation, but that has
little bearing on his investment strategies. Money is money, and I'm sure
Buffet has similar contempt for quite a few industries he's invested in.

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cafebabbe
A very forgiving description for what is just plain hypocrisy.

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dunce2020
That's not hypocrisy.

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thedudeabides5
Yeah it’s called “shifting the portfolio” and seems a reasonable thing to do
for the worlds best fundamental investor in this time of unlimited printing.

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mxschumacher
Berkshire's public equity holdings are worth about $215bn. The Barrick
position represents about 0.25% of that. It really isn't a big deal.

Aside from Buffett, Todd Combs and Ted Weschler each have about $10bn to
invest - it is entirely possible that they made this investment without
consulting Buffett (they don't have to ask for permission). In the past
they've also bought Amazon - another non-Buffett pick.

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ramblerman
Clarification for anyone going off the title. He bought stock in a __gold
mining __company. Not gold itself.

I find the title to be a bit disingenous.

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kstenerud
He's not buying actual gold; he's buying into a gold mining company.

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blackrock
I suspect that gold is a very common metal throughout the inner solar system,
and the asteroid belt. It’s only valuable now, because of its rarity on earth.

But once we can mine the lower gravity of Mars, then someone might dig up a
gold mine.

And Venus I would suspect has a lot of gold. If we can slow it’s runaway
global warming, then we might be able to establish a colony there, and mine
gold.

The same concept goes for Mercury.

I’m surprised that the Moon hasn’t revealed trace elements of gold yet. I
suspect that it might be buried deep inside the core, where it sunk, while the
moon was still molten and forming. If someone can find a gold mine deposit
there, then they can build a mass driver to launch it on a return trip back to
earth. Or just use it to build new spacecraft in outer space.

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ralph84
Buffett spent the last six months panic selling. "Be fearful when others are
fearful" is his new motto. He doesn't have the same political connections he
had during the GFC to get in on the sweet government-backed bailout deals this
time around.

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onetimemanytime
Not connections, this time the FED bailed out companies. Last time they had no
government cash or was very scarce so they had to call the one person with a
purse. And Buffet made the rules, accordingly to the power he held over the
borrowers.

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muzika
There must be something coming to our economy soon if he is willing to bet so
much on gold.

~~~
mvn9
Or something is coming to Goldman Sachs.

With zero-interest rates and quantitative easing, there is no need for
countries to borrow money because they can start printing it. At the same
time, China controls more and more business processes which leaves less to
companies that operate within Goldman Sachs' merger and acquisition world.

Taken even further, market economies could come to an end because they cannot
exist in a world where China can be a loss-leader in every strategically
important market. If China is poaching TSMC's engineers [1], what does stop
them from doing that to all relevant production processes? Either TSMC and all
the other companies need artificial profits to pay more to their engineers or
there need to be other barriers. Either way, the importance of markets could
decline and so could Goldman Sachs.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24129861](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24129861)

~~~
redis_mlc
> market economies could come to an end because they cannot exist in a world
> where China can be a loss-leader in every strategically important market.

This.

Already happened with rare earth processing and pharma.

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moneywoes
For a gold miner* misleading title

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mxschumacher
the ticket symbol of barrick is GOLD

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totalZero
Caterpillar is CAT, but you don't see headlines that say "Blackrock traded
Microsoft for cat."

