Buffett in Boston

Speaking to Boston business leaders during an appearance in a Fenway Park clubroom, Warren Buffett praised the CEOs of two local Berkshire-related companies.

Boston Globe business columnist Jon Chesto reported on Thursday's "HubWeek Curated Conversation."

When asked what he looks for in a person who is running a potential acquisition target, Buffett said, "They've really got to be in love with the business."

Jordan's Furniture chief Eliot Tatelman, for example, "gets excited when he's opening a new store. He's not doing it because someone in headquarters told him to."  Berkshire bought Jordan in 1999.

Buffett also cited Haven CEO Atul Gawande as a visionary who is always looking to the future.

Haven is the health care joint venture created early last year by Berkshire Hathaway, JPMorgan Chase and Amazon.com.

Buffett said Haven "does not have a business objective. It's got a social objective," to "bend the cost curve" for health care.

New stock in Berkshire's portfolio gets earnings bump

Shares of Restoration Hardware parent RH rallied 18 percent between Wednesday afternoon's earnings release and today's close.

Its $2.79 per share profit substantially beat Wall Street's consensus forecast of $2.23, but the company did not make a significant change to its current- quarter forecast.

The stock got a boost last month after Berkshire revealed it bought 1.2 million shares in the third quarter.

The relatively small value of the stake, $206 million as of September 30, indicates one of Berkshire's portfolio managers bought the stock, not Buffett himself.

The shares are now worth almost $293 million. That's an impressive 42% gain since the end of Q3 and a 38% increase since the November 14 close, just before Berkshire disclosed the stake's existence.

But looking at it from another perspective, the $87 million paper profit since September 30 is 0.00000004% of $239 billion, roughly the current value of Berkshire's publicly-disclosed U.S. stock portfolio.

Don't believe everything you see on the internet 

PolitiFact reminds us that "No, Warren Buffett isn’t asking you to forward an email about the 'Congressional Reform Act of 2019'"

That's in response to a Facebook post that's been shared almost 100,000 times that claims "Buffet" is promoting a chain mail scheme that promotes an imaginary piece of legislation.

PolitiFact notes this fiction has been around for years, citing a 2012 magazine story headlined "Warren Buffett and the mythical ‘Congressional Reform Act.’"

BUFFETT AROUND THE INTERNET

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HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE ARCHIVE

From the 1998 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting ...

BERKSHIRE STOCK WATCH

Berkshire Hathaway Class A shares closed at $333,640 Friday, up 0.6% over the previous four weeks, and up 6.9% from one year ago.

Berkshire Hathaway Class B shares closed at $222.61, up 0.6% over the previous four weeks, and up 7.0% from one year ago.

The benchmark S&P 500 index closed at 3,145.91, up 1.7% over the previous four weeks, and up 16.7% from one year ago.

BERKSHIRE'S TOP STOCK HOLDINGS 

Berkshire's top stock holdings by market value, based on today's closing prices. The number of shares held is as of September 30, 2019, as disclosed in the company's November 14 13F SEC filing.

The full list of holdings and current market values is available from CNBC.com's Berkshire Hathaway Portfolio Tracker.

QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS

Please send any questions or comments about the newsletter to me at alex.crippen@nbcuni.com. (Sorry, but we don't forward questions or comments to Buffett himself.)

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-- Alex Crippen, Editor, Warren Buffett Watch