
Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Stock Underperforms the Most Since 2009 - thesausageking
https://www.wsj.com/articles/berkshire-hathaway-posts-29-2-billion-in-quarterly-earnings-11582379630
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fxtentacle
"underperforms" here means that they only made 11% profit, or something along
the lines of 30 billion USD per 3 months.

So this isn't any real-world trouble, nor did anyone actually lose money. It's
simply investors feeling frowny because they were hoping for an even higher
payout. Poor them :p

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nottorp
So it underperforms compared to ... having your own money printing operation?

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polote
The performance of a stock is usually compared to one index, (S&P 500 in that
case)

The reasoning is that doing 4% when the market is in average doing 10% it is
more or less the same as losing 6%

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markdown
If other people making more than you means you're losing, then you're losing
from the day you were born to the day you die.

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darawk
No...this is how you measure performance. If you are paying an active manager
like Buffet to manage money for you, you want them to do better than a dumb
strategy like "just buy the whole index". That is why relative performance
matters here.

This isn't supposed to inspire pity or something. It's supposed to give you
information about the possible deterioration of his edge. Which isn't to say
that it gives you much information about that, just, that's its point.

What you said here is the equivalent of going to a basketball game and saying
that it doesn't make sense to talk about which team was better because they
both scored points.

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richardw
It often underperforms during periods of exuberance. Everyone bleats until
there’s a crash, leaving Berkshire as one of the few still above water.

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coder1001
Isn't investing with Warren a long term play? One year lower is a big deal?

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mikkom
Not down, just lower profit than stock index.

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coder1001
Miss-typed! Thanks for pointing it out.

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wiredfool
It’s Berkshire Hathaway’s worst year relative to the SP 500 in the last 10,
not that it’s underperformed for 10 years.

(Using the metric of stock price, which is basically popularity and over the
short term doesn’t necessarily correspond to any actual rationality. Ymmv, the
market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent, etc)

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nodesocket
We will see BRK performance compared to the S&P with the potential upcoming
meltdown of the market due to Coronavirus global slowdown. Futures for Monday
looking god-awful. The next 9 months in the market are going to be very
interesting (fed decisions, election, lasting effects of virus).

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RickJWagner
Buffett is notoriously conservative. The current bull market has gone very
long. When the pendulum switches back the other way, people will be writing
about the genius of Warren Buffett once again.

Buffett's first rule of money: "Don't lose money."

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Onanymous
And so does the Bridgewater to the best of my knowledge. This could mean those
guys are hedging too much against the next bubble burst and expect it to come
rather sooner then later.

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polote
I can't read the article but, maybe this could be largely explained as BK
almost doesn't invest in tech

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tree3
Unsurprising. Berkshire is holding a lot of cash, waiting to invest it at a
better time.

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voiper1
Paywalled for me.

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nottorp
What are the actual numbers? TFA is paywalled ofc.

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fierarul
It's the first page in the Buffet letter:
[https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/2019ltr.pdf](https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/2019ltr.pdf)

