Warren Buffett reassures everyone that he's in excellent health

Omaha, NB (The Cheeky Post) Buffettologists, value investors, and Berkshire Hathaway shareholders breathed a collective sigh of relief at 8 a.m. Eastern this morning with the release of Warren Buffett's annual letter to shareholders. The sixteen-page report brimmed with wit, wisdom and aphorism, proving once again that the 87-year-old Buffett is the Mark Twain of CEOs.

Can you distinguish Buffett from Twain? (A prize goes to the first person in the comment section who correctly identifies these seven quotes as Twain or Buffett.)

You only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out.

Clothes make the man, Naked people have little or no influence in society.

What we learn from history is that people don't learn from history.

Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.

Performance comes, performance goes. Fees never falter. 

All generalizations are false including this one.

If we couldn't laugh we would all go insane.

Only a billionaire with a Twainian sense of humour would position men named Jain and Abel as twin vice Chairmen and possible successors. Jain and Abel are not overtly competing for the top job, and Buffett's letter did not identify either as a front runner, but everyone agrees they are the most likely candidates to replace Buffett if the day ever comes when he is no longer is able to lead. Bloomberg, most Buffettologists, and biblical scholars believe Abel, the humble Canadian accountant, will get the job.

My grandfather, a humble Canadian scalded by the Depression, kept his money frozen in the refrigerator wrapped in white paper marked "bacon." Warren Buffett has a $116.0 billion pile of bacon in his freezer and nothing to spend it on. Berkshire reviewed many possible purchases in 2017, but found the prices too high. Yet there were no shortage of purchasers eager to dive in, investment bankers to cheer them on and spreadsheets that always promise synergies.

Time for a classic Buffett aphorism comparing acquisitive CEOs to horny teenagers.

The CEO job self-selects for "can-do" types. If Wall Street analysts or board members urge that brand of CEO to consider possible acquisitions, it's a bit like telling your ripening teenager to be sure to have a normal sex life.

One can't help but wonder what Buffett considers a "normal" sex life to be, but we know for sure that he is a man of few synergies, and a distaste for debt who will never risk what he has to obtain that which he doesn't need. The few acquisitions he made in 2017 valued human assets over physical assets, truck stops over autonomous vehicles. Betting on people over things at a time when people are viewed as impediments to robots proves that Warren Buffett is a man who is totally out of step with the times. However, Buffett also referred to hurricanes Harvey and Irma and as "American mega-cats" shrinking catastrophes with incalculable human costs to an insurance industry euphemism. Such is the contradictory charm of Warren Buffett.

Every year Warren Buffet has something stuck in his craw, and it usually involves either financial advisors who overcharge for their incapability to outperform the S&P index, or GAAP--generally accepted accounting principles. This year, Buffett is peeved that in the future Berkshire must disclose unrealized gains on its stock holdings. Buffett can envision much confusion as disclosure of volatility will cause many to lose their heads and hit the panic button.

Time for Buffett to quote Rudyard Kipling's If.

A lengthy analysis followed of a million dollar bet Buffet won as he challenged professional investors to beat the market with their hedge funds. Stick with big, "easy" decisions and eschew activity is the Buffett takeaway from his million-dollar win. He also paused to consider if long-term bonds truly are low-risk. Answer: invest in Berkshire instead.

This year's letter was seven pages shorter than last year's letter. Wells Fargo was not mentioned--it's an embarrassment that not even an oracle can explain. Buffett also didn't mention the recent health care initiative with Amazon and JPMorgan Chase & Co. to lower health care costs.

Warren Buffett still believes in humility, railroads and Jell-O. Millions of people find this human anachronism reassuring. Even if a 90-year-old has never run a multi-billion dollar corporation, and the sum of the parts of Berkshire Hathaway are worth more than its whole, the hope exists that Warren Buffett will lead Berkshire Hathaway forever. Each year we cling more tightly to his letters that read like missives from an antique world that's slipping away.