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Betreff des ThemasLetter 2008 - Die interessantesten Passagen
URL des Themashttps://aktien-portal.at/forum/../forum/boerse-aktien.php?az=show_topic&forum=125&topic_id=7032&mesg_id=10215
10215, Letter 2008 - Die interessantesten Passagen
Eingetragen von Warren Buffett, 01.3.09 20:58
Ich habe mir seinen Letter für 2008 durchgelesen. Die mMn interessantesten
Passagen:


The table on the preceding page, recording both the 44-year
performance of Berkshire’s book value
and the S&P 500 index, shows that 2008 was the worst year for each.
The period was devastating as well for
corporate and municipal bonds, real estate and commodities. By
yearend, investors of all stripes were bloodied
and confused, much as if they were small birds that had strayed into a
badminton game.

As the year progressed, a series of life-threatening problems within
many of the world’s great financial
institutions was unveiled. This led to a dysfunctional credit market
that in important respects soon turned
non-functional. The watchword throughout the country became the creed
I saw on restaurant walls when I was
young: “In God we trust; all others pay cash.”


I told you in an earlier part of this report that last year I made a
major mistake of commission (and
maybe more; this one sticks out). Without urging from Charlie or
anyone else, I bought a large amount of
ConocoPhillips stock when oil and gas prices were near their peak. I
in no way anticipated the dramatic fall in
energy prices that occurred in the last half of the year. I still
believe the odds are good that oil sells far higher in
the future than the current $40-$50 price. But so far I have been dead
wrong. Even if prices should rise,
moreover, the terrible timing of my purchase has cost Berkshire
several billion dollars.

I made some other already-recognizable errors as well. They were
smaller, but unfortunately not that
small. During 2008, I spent $244 million for shares of two Irish banks
that appeared cheap to me. At yearend we
wrote these holdings down to market: $27 million, for an 89% loss.
Since then, the two stocks have declined
even further. The tennis crowd would call my mistakes “unforced errors.”

The investment world has gone from underpricing risk to overpricing
it. This change has not been
minor; the pendulum has covered an extraordinary arc. A few years ago,
it would have seemed unthinkable that
yields like today’s could have been obtained on good-grade municipal
or corporate bonds even while risk-free
governments offered near-zero returns on short-term bonds and no
better than a pittance on long-terms. When the
financial history of this decade is written, it will surely speak of
the Internet bubble of the late 1990s and the
housing bubble of the early 2000s. But the U.S. Treasury bond bubble
of late 2008 may be regarded as almost
equally extraordinary.

Clinging to cash equivalents or long-term government bonds at present
yields is almost certainly a
terrible policy if continued for long. Holders of these instruments,
of course, have felt increasingly comfortable –
in fact, almost smug – in following this policy as financial turmoil
has mounted. They regard their judgment
confirmed when they hear commentators proclaim “cash is king,” even
though that wonderful cash is earning
close to nothing and will surely find its purchasing power eroded over time.

Sleeping around, to continue our metaphor, can actually be useful for
large derivatives dealers because
it assures them government aid if trouble hits. In other words, only
companies having problems that can infect
the entire neighborhood – I won’t mention names – are certain to
become a concern of the state (an outcome, I’m
sad to say, that is proper). From this irritating reality comes The
First Law of Corporate Survival for ambitious
CEOs who pile on leverage and run large and unfathomable derivatives
books: Modest incompetence simply
won’t do; it’s mindboggling screw-ups that are required.

Considering the ruin I’ve pictured, you may wonder why Berkshire is a
party to 251 derivatives
contracts (other than those used for operational purposes at
MidAmerican and the few left over at Gen Re). The
answer is simple: I believe each contract we own was mispriced at
inception, sometimes dramatically so. I both
initiated these positions and monitor them, a set of responsibilities
consistent with my belief that the CEO of any
large financial organization must be the Chief Risk Officer as well.
If we lose money on our derivatives, it will be
my fault.
Our derivatives dealings require our counterparties to make payments
to us when contracts are
initiated. Berkshire therefore always holds the money, which leaves us
assuming no meaningful counterparty
risk. As of yearend, the payments made to us less losses we have paid
– our derivatives “float,” so to speak –
totaled $8.1 billion. This float is similar to insurance float: If we
break even on an underlying transaction, we will
have enjoyed the use of free money for a long time. Our expectation,
though it is far from a sure thing, is that we
will do better than break even and that the substantial investment
income we earn on the funds will be frosting on
the cake.

Our put contracts total $37.1 billion (at current exchange rates) and
are spread among four major
indices: the S&P 500 in the U.S., the FTSE 100 in the U.K., the Euro
Stoxx 50 in Europe, and the
Nikkei 225 in Japan. Our first contract comes due on September 9, 2019
and our last on January 24,
2028. We have received premiums of $4.9 billion, money we have
invested. We, meanwhile, have
paid nothing, since all expiration dates are far in the future.
Nonetheless, we have used Black-
Scholes valuation methods to record a yearend liability of $10
billion, an amount that will change
on every reporting date. The two financial items – this estimated loss
of $10 billion minus the $4.9
billion in premiums we have received – means that we have so far
reported a mark-to-market loss
of $5.1 billion from these contracts.

The second category we described in last year’s report concerns
derivatives requiring us to pay
when credit losses occur at companies that are included in various
high-yield indices. Our standard
contract covers a five-year period and involves 100 companies. We
modestly expanded our position
last year in this category. But, of course, the contracts on the books
at the end of 2007 moved one
year closer to their maturity. Overall, our contracts now have an
average life of 21⁄3 years, with the
first expiration due to occur on September 20, 2009 and the last on
December 20, 2013.
By yearend we had received premiums of $3.4 billion on these contracts
and paid losses of $542
million. Using mark-to-market principles, we also set up a liability
for future losses that at yearend
totaled $3.0 billion. Thus we had to that point recorded a loss of
about $100 million, derived from
our $3.5 billion total in paid and estimated future losses minus the
$3.4 billion of premiums we
received. In our quarterly reports, however, the amount of gain or
loss has swung wildly from a
profit of $327 million in the second quarter of 2008 to a loss of $693
million in the fourth quarter of
2008.

In 2008 we began to write “credit default swaps” on individual
companies. This is simply credit
insurance, similar to what we write in BHAC, except that here we bear
the credit risk of
corporations rather than of tax-exempt issuers.
If, say, the XYZ company goes bankrupt, and we have written a $100
million contract, we are
obligated to pay an amount that reflects the shrinkage in value of a
comparable amount of XYZ’s
debt. (If, for example, the company’s bonds are selling for 30 after
default, we would owe $70
million.) For the typical contract, we receive quarterly payments for
five years, after which our
insurance expires.
At yearend we had written $4 billion of contracts covering 42
corporations, for which we receive
annual premiums of $93 million. This is the only derivatives business
we write that has any
counterparty risk; the party that buys the contract from us must be
good for the quarterly premiums
it will owe us over the five years. We are unlikely to expand this
business to any extent because
most buyers of this protection now insist that the seller post
collateral, and we will not enter into
such an arrangement.
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