Berkshire Hathaway 2019 Letter to Shareholders

Berkshire earned $81.4 billion in 2019 according to generally accepted accounting principles (commonly called “GAAP”). The components of that…

The adoption of the rule by the accounting profession, in fact, was a monumental shift in its own thinking. Before 2018, GAAP insisted – with an…

Berkshire’s 2018 and 2019 years glaringly illustrate the argument we have with the new rule. In 2018, a down year for the stock market, our net…

Meanwhile, in what we might call the real world, as opposed to accounting-land, Berkshire’s equity holdings averaged about $200 billion during the…