Warren Buffett turns 96 on Sunday. Berkshire shares remain flat. Investors paid good money to watch a stock do absolutely nothing while a man in his tenth decade eats See's Candies and drinks Cherry Coke.
The technical setup here is fascinating. Draw a line from where the stock was to where it is now. That line goes sideways. Some call this consolidation. Others call it a base. I call it ač”ē„Ø that forgot it's supposed to move.
Retail traders spent months analyzing Buffett's annual letters for clues about value investing. They learned about competitive moats and margin of safety. They bought Berkshire at $650,000 per A-share. The stock rewarded them by doing an impression of a dead battery.
The birthday angle kills me. Buffett remains active at 96. Good for him. My neighbor Gary remains active at 68. He does tai chi in the park and yells at teenagers. Nobody writes headlines about Gary's activity level because Gary's stock isn't traded on the NYSE.
Berkshire's anemic performance tells you everything about the disconnect between narrative and price action. Financial media writes breathless profiles about the Oracle of Omaha's longevity. Charts show a horizontal line that looks like Kansas. One of these things matters for your account balance. Hint: it's not the Sunday birthday party.
The real comedy is watching people treat Buffett's age as a catalyst. He's 96 and still working. Incredible. Inspiring. Completely f*cking irrelevant to whether the stock goes up or down next week. Price doesn't care if he benches 225 or needs help opening a jar.
Somewhere a retail trader is drafting a post about how Buffett's longevity proves the strength of Berkshire's fundamentals. That trader is holding shares that haven't moved in months while writing fanfiction about compound interest.
Photo by on Unsplash
Leave a Comment