Berkshire Hathaway
The cheapest quality in the market is still a conglomerate nobody wants to explain at a dinner party. Insurance float plus a cash pile is a call option on other people's panic.
A record cash balance earns real interest while the operating businesses keep compounding quietly.
Berkshire is the only company where I can describe the business model as 'collect premiums, invest the float, and wait.' The insurance operations produce money to invest at a cost that is frequently negative. That is a structurally advantaged form of leverage.
The criticism is always the same: it is too big to compound, the next generation will be worse, the cash is a drag. Then a decade passes and book value per share grows at a rate that beats the index with fewer drawdowns.
Why we still own it
The rest of the Berkshire Hathaway thesis
Includes the risks we think matter, the numbers we check each quarter, and the exact conditions under which we would sell.
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