Berkshire Hathaway: The Incomparable Compounder - [Business Breakdowns, EP. 63]

Also, their discipline of walking away from insurance business when it was badly priced was key to their success.

At some point in the 90s Coca Cola was 40% of BH’s portfolio, and they made a 13x on the investment during the next decade

The lessons to take from Buffet’s career, letters, etc. is not what criteria do I use to analyze stuff to buy, rather, where to get the capital to buy that stuff with. Don’t blow yourself up.

Berkshire is what it is due to its Insurance operation (float).

Throughout the 70s, they were able to make a series of investments that went particularly well (Gillet, Washington Post…).

Until 1998 BH run a levered operation by having more invested assets in the insurance operation than BH itself had in book value.

Retaining profit in a place where you can retain it and invest it well over time, that is a huge advantage to BH that most other (public) companies don’t have.