Despite the usual breathless fawning, let’s face it, Buffett’s latest letter reads as if it’s the last one and he duly notes it.

And it’s sadly fascinating, like watching Michael Jordan play at the highest levels of the game in his 50’s, knowing that “this can’t last.”

The Letters naturally have gotten shorter, more repetitive (you too Howard Marks) as they somewhat should. Trust me, write monthly, quarterly or annually from a “Northern Star” approach and it is a bitch of a task to say and reinforce sort of the same thing using different words, of which there seems to be only about 170,000 in active use in the American language.

And people, try reading the actual 10K which actually has details about what Berkshire is up to in some broad financial math context, which is going to be an upcoming problem in this writer’s opinion. Despite all the preparation and cult building aside, this is the house that Buffett built and no one will be able to pull it off in the same form after he is gone. Homey-ness aside, Berkshire’s sprawl is full of underperforming individual entities that could really benefit from outside management and a freshen-up. It is presently impossible to really focus on an answer as to “which,” given the give the opaque accounting and clumping to which we are served, but we have run into numerous instances of ‘what the hell is going on there” during our research into competitiveness — Lurbrizol and Precision Castparts — being 2 noted instances.

And that is my bet for post Warren: incessant pressure to do…something different. Dividends? Whining about capital allocation? Splitting into more manageable bites? It is very hard to sum of the parts Berkshire, given accounting opaqueness and the intermingling between insurance assets and operating assets, which is somewhat unique in the “Smart Guy Insurance Company I want to Buy Operating Businesses Too” world. My guess is that a post Buffett dip or stagnation that results into a GE like split of things would result in a higher stock price. Buffett built a team that could learn from him, not clone him.

So, there is actually very little in the 2025 letter that moves one to highlight, other than what one sees in oneself.

To wit, we have been making the argument endlessly about the advantages of public company investing and what an advantage one can have if one is not running $80 billion or the sector equivalent.

“With marketable equities, it is easier to change course when I make a mistake. Berkshire’s present size, it should be underscored, diminishes this valuable option. We can’t come and go on a dime. Sometimes a year or more is required to establish or divest an investment. Additionally, with ownership of minority positions we can’t change management if that action is needed or control what is done with capital flows if we are unhappy with the decisions being made.

With controlled companies, we can dictate these decisions, but we have far less flexibility in the disposition of mistakes. In reality, Berkshire almost never sells controlled businesses unless we face what we believe to be unending problems. An offset is that some business owners seek out Berkshire because of our steadfast behavior. Occasionally, that can be a decided plus for” us.

And:

“Moreover, Greg, our directors and I all have a very large investment in Berkshire in relation to any compensation we receive. We do not use options or other one-sided forms of compensation; if you lose money, so do we. This approach encourages caution but does not ensure foresight.”

The other obvious area is “the cash.” The obvious answer is obvious: we are really big and it’s really hard to employ a lot of capital all the time; things are “generally expensive” and lastly, we don’t have a called strike and can wait out the hourly cycle of Wall Street. And we are earning 4.7% – Buh-Bye.

Yes, I still own it having halved the position every decade having said much the same thing.