That is a shift over the last few decades. The company made its early money by buying undervalued companies at a low price, but came to understand over time that long-term, it is almost-irrelevant at what price you buy a truly wonderful company. Furthermore, the financial world took notice of the outperformance of the Graham-and-Dodd approach, meaning that few true bargains sit on the modern market for long, if ever.
The challenge in the past decade or so for Berkshire has been that everything has, from a value-investor perspective, been substantially overpriced, making deploying new cash challenging.
AAPL was one of the exceptions -- at the time that they bought it, as I recall, it had a P/E of 9 and a substantial competitive moat. The geopolitics risk remains, however, scary.
Berkshire has also grown so large that it is not worth their time to identify undervalued mid-cap companies. They are not pursing companies in the class of See's Candy any longer.
The Munger article on the Register offers his opinion of the Taiwan situation:
Speaking of China, Munger offered his opinion that the prospects of the Middle Kingdom invading Taiwan have fallen greatly since Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine. In Munger's estimation, China felt Russia's invasion would succeed, but has changed its assumptions after Ukraine's successful defense.
"I think it's off the table … for a long, long, time," he said, and that makes investment in China more attractive.
It also means worries that China could disrupt global semiconductor supply chains are reduced. But Munger isn't keen on semiconductors because they're too capital intensive.
The challenge in the past decade or so for Berkshire has been that everything has, from a value-investor perspective, been substantially overpriced, making deploying new cash challenging.
AAPL was one of the exceptions -- at the time that they bought it, as I recall, it had a P/E of 9 and a substantial competitive moat. The geopolitics risk remains, however, scary.