BRK -- Storms Never Last — October 18, 2023

Locator: 45810INV.

Best song ever to almost end up in the trash? Written by Jessi Colter.

Meanwhile, best call ever? Link here. 

 
The story linked at Barron's.

Berkshire Hathaway’s bet on an inactive Florida hurricane season looks like it will pay off, potentially netting the company several billion dollars.

Berkshire operates a major property and casualty insurer and decided early this year to take on about $15 billion of exposure if storms struck Florida during this year’s hurricane season. So far, there has been one notable storm to hit Florida, Hurricane Idalia, around September 1 and it caused insured damage of $3 billion to $5 billion, according to Moody’s RMS. That’s modest by current hurricane standards with Hurricane Ian in 2022 causing $50 billion in insured damages. Berkshire’s share of the Idalia loss is likely to be small. The company didn’t respond to a request for comment. 

BRK class A stock is down 0.4% Tuesday to $525,320 and is up 12% this year, about two percentage points behind the S&P 500.

The peak of the hurricane season ends in mid October and while storms may occur into mid November, they tend to be less severe. There are no major storms developing now in the Atlantic Ocean. 

Berkshire has largely been out of the Florida hurricane market in recent years because its lead insurance executive, Ajit Jain, felt rates were inadequate to compensate for the risk. That changed this year. Jain and CEO Warren Buffett discussed the move at the company’s annual meeting in May.

So many story lines here. My favorite: the S&P this year -- and stock pickers should have done much,much better. 

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All my posts are done quickly: there will be content and typographical errors. If anything on any of my posts is important to you, go to the source. If/when I find typographical / content errors, I will correct them.  

Again, all my posts are done quickly. There will be typographical and content errors in all my posts. If any of my posts are important to you, go to the source.