On Monday, the S&P 500 started off strong but ended the day up just 0.3% and Toronto was up a similar 0.2%.
There were no notable moves for any of the individual stocks on my watch list.
Warren Buffett’s latest annual letter came out on Saturday. https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/2022ltr.pdf
His main lesson for investors was that it only takes a few very good stock picks in a lifetime if you can let those winners really run. I’ve been much more active on Facebook and Twitter lately (use the links at the top of every page on this site to follow InvestorsFriend on Facebook and or Twitter) and coincidentally it was just a few days ago that I mentioned that the hardest part of buy and hold was often having the discipline to simply hold for a very long time.
Buffett also gave some figures about income taxes. He mentioned that the U.S. federal Treasury collected a total of $32.3 trillion dollars in 2021 sourced as follows: 48% from individual income taxes, 34.5% from social security and related receipts, 8.5% from corporate income taxes and the rest from a wide variety of lesser levies. He then explained that Berkshire’s contribution alone amounted to one tenth of one percent of the grand total. I found it interesting that he did not say anything about the corporate taxes being just 8.5%. But I suspect he may have just let that figure speak for itself to those readers whose eye it caught. To make his point that, if there were 1000 taxpayers as big as Berkshire, no other business or individual would have to pay a penny Buffett did not need to give that breakout showing the 8.5%. So I think he may have just slipped it in without saying anything and therefore getting into a controversial area. But I’m pretty sure he thinks that 8.5% is far too low. He tends to think corporate income taxes should be higher. This may even have been for Elizabeth Warren’s eyes. A bit of a hidden message in plain sight?
Related to this Buffett also rather subtly noted that the 2021 U.S. deficit was $11.6 trillion. Then he said he had no opinion on the consequences of that that huge imbalance. Yet he went on to say that huge and entrenched fiscal deficits have consequences. Right after saying that he laid out the revenue source percentages that I mentioned above. Now if he wanted to subtly get readers thinking of about which of the sources could be higher to solve the deficit, it’s pretty obvious that you would have to conclude that the 8.5% corporate contribution looked a little skinny.
Am I reading too much into this? Maybe. As far as I can tell no one in the media has picked up on that skinny 8.5% figure.
On the other hand Buffett said that anyone claiming that all share buy backs are harmful to shareholders or the country is an economic illiterate or basically a liar. That too may possibly have been directed at Elizabeth Warren. If so, that message was certainly not subtle or hidden.