Berkshire’s Abel Gets $17.5 Million After Incentive Plan Expires

“In his early years, Jack was frequently mocked by the investment-management industry”, Buffett wrote. A further point of criticism from Mr. Buffett was levied against corporate executives who attempt to exclude stock based compensation from their “adjusted earnings”.

He said he estimates that wealthy investors who use high-priced advisers have wasted over $100 billion over the past decade. The regulation would make it more hard for some brokers to recommend pricey or complicated investment products and would require brokers working with retirement savers to put their client’s interests ahead of their own.

But with positions of more than 7% in Delta, Southwest, United and American, Buffett said he generally prefers to not boost stakes above 10%, saying “It complicates life for us”. On Monday, Buffett told CNBC that Berkshire now owns 133 million shares of Apple stock worth about $17 billion.

Mr Buffett steered clear of mentioning President Trump in his annual letter to shareholders in his investment firm. And it puts his stake in Apple at 1.1 percent, worth almost $7.1 billion as of December 31, 2016.

Berkshire started buying shares of Apple in mid-2016, and had 61 million shares by the end of the year.

“But I wanted to put on the walls days of extreme panic in Wall Street, just as a reminder that anything can happen in this world”, Buffett said.

For the fourth quarter, Berkshire’s net income rose to $6.29 billion, or $3,823 per Class A share, from $5.48 billion, or $3,333 per share, a year earlier, helped by a $1.1 billion increase in gains from investments and derivatives.

‘Investors, on average and over time, will do better with a low-priced index fund than with a group of funds of funds’.

Jeff Hull, senior financial advisor at Manulife Securities has followed Warren Buffett’s career for more than 25 years.

But none of those iPhones were bought by Buffett.

And while Buffett’s investment philosophy has paid off well for himself and Berkshire, if forced to choose between Berkshire and Apple, Buffett said he would bet on Apple to become the first company in history to reach a $1 trillion market valuation. Berkshire gained $27.5 billion in net worth during 2016, Buffett said. The letter which was released last week also describes the performance of the more than 90 companies that Berkshire owns. In times of rising stock markets, passive funds do well; in times of declining markets, managed funds sometimes have the advantage because they can profit on price declines as well as rises.