And what a year - what it doesn't say is far more important than what it does. Where's the grappling with the fact that their 2020 return was only 2% when the indexes are up 20%? (Did I read that right?!) For that matter, shouldn't the fact that their return in 2020 was so low be grounds for very serious soul-searching? Buffett has always justified the cash reserves and passive investing as enabling him to make awesome deals during the proverbial rainy day. Well, was not 2020 the mother of all rainy days? Where are his deals? If he couldn't do anything with his bankroll in 2020, when is he ever going to be able to do anything with it? What did they do all year? Does he really have no thoughts about how the pandemic was handled? About Western governance and economics? Is it not astonishing that the sole and only reference I noticed to coronavirus is a throwaway clause about some furniture stores being closed? WTF. This is not at all the letter I was expecting.
Has anyone seen Buffett in person recently? Are we sure he wasn't kidnapped and replaced with Deepfaked Zoom calls a year ago?
We might as well ask why his shareholder letters were interesting before? It’s a fairly unusual tradition.
Maybe the next CEO will have something to say, but it’s pretty optional.
And they should have an Instagram account with the same letter tl;dr to a 5 image post, for young investors.
That would sum most of it up.
It doesn't look like they are trying to attract young investors.
And when a young investor does become attracted to Berkshire, they would be likely to review more than just one single letter.
Which is actually pretty short for what it has to say.
Graph:
https://imgur.com/a/TQ2oewY