Buffett began publishing Berkshire Hathaway’s public equity holdings in 1976. While some of Berkshire’s key investments were made at this time, it is also extremely instructive for two reasons. It immediately proceeds a period in time that Buffett recognised as one of the greatest opportunities for finding bargains in public markets. Unlike the partnership days, the Oracle of Omaha had all his energy focused on long term buy and hold positions. His earlier years were dominated by operations in net-nets, activism, and merger arbitrage situations which, while interesting, are not what we would be associated with him today.
The period is also worth studying due to the intense macro-economic volatility that marked the end of the Nifty-Fifty bubble until Volker’s taming of inflation in 1982. Some of the companies Buffett held are still publicly traded today, and would have returned many times his initial investment if he had sat on his hands. We can also see his mental model ‘Gross Revenue Royalties’ play out in real time.
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