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Posts Tagged ‘company berkshire hathaway’

I heard that Warren Buffet has some nice return investments for 1000.00 Goodmorning America? I can't find out. any idea's on what this means? Don't have a guy that knows a guy. just poor me. HA

You probably heard about Warren Buffet's company Berkshire Hathaway Inc.

The so-called 'Baby Berk' stock trades under the symbol BRK-B, current market price is around $72 per share.

http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=brk-b

The original common trades under BRK-A and trades for $107,950 per share.

Warren buffet investments?

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett plans to distribute more than $30 billion of his stock to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Buffett, 75, plans to commit 10 million class B shares of his company, Berkshire Hathaway, to the Gates Foundation. They will be distributed at a rate of 5 percent of the balance annually. Based on the current value of the stock, Buffett’s commitment is more $30 billion, which doubles the size of the funds available to the Gates Foundation.

The Gates Foundation will ultimately receive 85 percent of Buffett’s personal wealth, rather than the investor’s three children or the foundations that they run.

“My kids were elated when I told them (about the Gates Foundation donation). They knew my views on inherited wealth and shared them,” Buffett said during a press conference on Monday. “I believe in equality of opportunity…They should not inherit my position in society, based on the womb that they were born from.”

Buffett, a long-time friend of Gates, said he chose to allocate the bulk of his wealth to the Gates Foundation after becoming familiar with the organization and the results it had achieved, based on dollars invested.

“The results are terrific,” Buffett said.

The Gates Foundation focuses on global health issues, such as the GAVI Alliance to distribute vaccines to children in poor countries, and education, such as the United Negro College Fund Gates Millennium Scholars Program.

“We’ve known Warren since 1991, and it is his view that wealth should go back to society that got us thinking of our own foundation,” Gates said during the press conference.

While Buffett will serve as a director on the Gates Foundation, he said he prefers spending his time as a professional money manager at Berkshire Hathaway and leaving the details of investing his charitable contributions to others.

When investing, Buffett said he seeks companies that are easy to understand. but the billionaire noted that philanthropy is the opposite. he said it requires a willingness to take large risks to fix complex problems that others have likely failed trying to solve.

The Gates Foundation not only faces that challenge but also the challenge of doubling the level of its funding to charities.

“It’ll be a big challenge to make sure we’re using the money in the right way,” Gates said. “We’ll be giving away (a combined) $3 billion a year and will do our best to make sure all the money is well spent.”

The Gates Foundation plans to delve deeper in its existing areas of focus, Melinda Gates said during the press conference. It will also possibly expand into other issues, such as microlending in order to help poor regions become more self-sufficient in agriculture and biotech, she said.

She added that despite Buffett’s financial commitment, the Gates Foundation will continue to partner with other charitable foundations to maximize financial resources and lessons learned. the Gates Foundation, for example, works with the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation to invest in Texas schools, as well as the David and Lucile Packard Foundation to deliver medicines in India.

Buffett’s financial commitment to the Gates Foundation is also contingent upon either Gates or his wife remaining actively involved in the organization. Earlier this month, Gates announced that in two years, he will be stepping down from his daily involvement with Microsoft as its chief software architect, in order to concentrate on the foundation full-time.

Reuters contributed to this report.

Buffett pledges $30 billion to Gates foundation

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Warren Buffett gets opportunities the rest of us don’t. He’s the name-brand investor companies go to when they need cash or a smidge of reputation in a hurry.

I have previously chronicled the crazy-sweet terms Goldman Sachs and General Electric gave Buffett. how crazy-sweet? they begged Buffett — technically his company, Berkshire Hathaway — to lend them money at a guaranteed 10% plus equity upside.

But before you get too jealous, know that this wasn’t always the case.

How Buffett made his opportunities
Let me take you back to a time when Buffett wasn’t worth 11 figures. Back to a time when he had only five figures to work with.

In his 20s, Buffett’s eventual avalanche was just a snowball. All his name could get him was a dinner reservation … if he called ahead.

So he had to work to find deals to invest in — deals that would form the basis of his fortune. he sought out the master investors of his time, including his hero Benjamin Graham, and learned everything they would teach him.

But more than anything, he did the legwork that others weren’t willing to do. in this time before the Internet, he’d physically go to Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s to read old reports, to the SEC to read filings, and to company headquarters to talk with management.

His persistence was rewarded handsomely, particularly in tiny, underfollowed companies. in Buffett’s own words: “I would pore through volumes of businesses and I’d find one or two … that were just ridiculously cheap.”

How cheap? in one six-year period, he grew his wealth by more than 60% a year. By age 26, he had amassed so much wealth that he considered retirement.

How Buffett lost his opportunities
Of course, he didn’t retire. in the decades since, he’s continued putting up incredible returns, and he’s laid claim to the unofficial title of greatest investor ever.

But with all this wealth comes a problem.

That problem is exemplified by Buffett’s recent purchase of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad — which he admits wasn’t a particular bargain.

The man who has absolutely throttled the market for more than five decades now says, “Reasonable return is good enough. … I mean, 50 years ago, I was looking for spectacular returns, but I can’t — I can’t get them.”

Why the surrender? one word: size.

Berkshire Hathaway is roughly the size of a Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT), an Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL), or an IBM (NYSE: IBM). Buffett’s empire has grown so large that the small multibaggers he used to stalk no longer make a dent in his portfolio’s returns.

For Buffett, analyzing and buying a small-cap stock has roughly the same cost benefit as us walking a mile to pick up a quarter. instead, he’s stuck stalking elephants like Burlington Northern, which was roughly the size of a Lowe’s (NYSE: LOW), a Bristol-Myers Squibb (NYSE: BMY), or an eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY).

Could he still do it today?
When Buffett could stalk mosquitoes instead of elephants, his returns were consistently monstrous. That was a long, long time ago, though. could he still do it today?

He thinks so. he says, “It’s a huge structural advantage not to have a lot of money. I think I could make you 50% a year on $1 million. no, I know I could. I guarantee that.”

Wow. Now, before we get carried away, that’s the greatest investor in the world taking on the market with no restrictions.

The takeaway for us mere mortals is that there’s more opportunity for outsized returns in small-cap stocks than there is in larger-cap stocks.

Just like Buffett
It’s nice to know we have one advantage over Buffett. for an idea of how to take advantage of said advantage, I turned to our small-cap experts at Motley Fool Hidden Gems.

They recommended doing the same type of work Buffett did back in his heyday — studying the master investors, vetting company management, and digging into financial statements to find strong balance sheets and large margins of safety.

Using this process, they’ve unearthed Neutral Tandem (Nasdaq: TNDM), a fledgling telecommunications network play that is disrupting the switching services provided by the Baby Bells. Backed by a cash-rich balance sheet, the company looks to growth opportunities in the increase of voice and data needs as well as its own geographic expansion.

The Hidden Gems team has put its money where its mouth is on Neutral Tandem, buying shares of it in the real-money portfolio it manages for the world to see. If you’d like to see what else it’s buying now, you can take a 30-day trial absolutely free. just click here to get started.

This article was originally published Dec. 24, 2009. it has been updated.

Anand Chokkavelu owns shares of Berkshire Hathaway. Berkshire Hathaway, Lowe’s, and Wal-Mart are Motley Fool inside Value recommendations. Apple, Berkshire Hathaway, and eBay are Stock Advisor picks. Motley Fool Options has recommended a bull call spread position on eBay. the Fool owns shares of Berkshire Hathaway and Neutral Tandem. The Fool has a disclosure policy.

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