Early Berkshire Hathaway Letters

Derek from Stableboy Selections has posted two of the "missing" Berkshire Hathaway letters (1969 – 1977). The first is written by Ken Chace, the CEO that Buffett put in charge after he ousted Seabury Stanton. These go along with the previously released 1973 and 1976 letters, which I link to below.

In the 1976 letter, equity investments are listed, and GEICO accounts for 31% of total holdings. I don’t believe these include any equities purchased through Blue Chip Stamps. That’s a fairly large position for most modern-day funds. However, it doesn’t compare to the concentration of Buffett’s portfolio before he managed other people’s money: (in the 1950’s, courtesy of Robert Miles)

Company	Industry	Value	%
GEICO	Insurance	$10,150	61.6%
Greif Brothers	Storage	$3,650	22.1%
Timely Clothes	Retail	$2,600	15.8%
Thor Corp.	Power tools	$2,550	15.5%
Baldwin	Music	$2,200	13.3%
Other		$330	2.0%
	Total holdings	$21,480
	Bank loan	($5,000)
	Total equity	$16,480

UPDATE: I reformatted both letters into PDF’s to make them a little more readable. For the PDF formats, follow these links: 1969; 1971

3 thoughts on “Early Berkshire Hathaway Letters”

Great stuff, Max. Thank you very much. The table of Buffett’s holdings is also very interesting. I remember Buffett stating several times that he had put a huge portion of his NW in GEICO when he was young. Same deal with Western Insurance.

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