"Too much of a good thing can be... wonderful." I'm quoting legendary investor Warren Buffett, who quotes "a sultry Mae West," in his latest annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK-A) shareholders. Buffett, as I'm sure you know, is chairman and CEO of the multinational conglomerate headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska (thus he's known as the Oracle of Omaha). His annual missive to fans and shareholders is always an enjoyable and worthwhile read. In it, he imparts much wisdom, both timeless and topical. You can read the letter here. Berkshire owns many companies outright, including the insurers Geico and General Reinsurance, as well as BNSF Railway (America's largest railroad company, measured by freight volume). But Berkshire Hathaway is probably better known as an investment vehicle for Buffett, who will turn 91 this year and has been running the company since the early 1960s. If you own shares in Berkshire, you own a piece of many other stocks that "the Oracle" has handpicked over a half-century. The company currently holds about $281 billion in stocks, and I've listed its top 15 holdings below. Berkshire owns 5.4% of Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL), which is the fifth-largest company in the world. Berkshire bought that stake for about $31.1 billion, and it's now worth four times that. Through operating earnings from its insurance businesses, railroad and energy utility companies, and other firms, plus realized capital gains from its stock holdings and dividends, the company earned $42.5 billion last year. However, not everything Berkshire touches turns to gold. Buffett's letter candidly discusses an investment in Precision Castparts that lost the company $11 billion last year. As Quantitative Strategist Nicholas Vardy has pointed out, Berkshire has made a few bad investments over the years. But investors who invested with Buffett and stuck with him have done well. The Berkshire class A shares are up more than 5,000% since 1990, and those shares are now priced at more than $376,000... each. Fortunately for us, in the 1990s Berkshire created class B shares (NYSE: BRK-B), which now go for about $250 each. Those shares are up more than 930% since 1996. Both classes of shares give you access to Buffett's famous portfolio. (Full disclosure: I own Berkshire stock in my portfolio.) And, by the way, Warren Buffett may have made his fortune by investing in promising companies, but he's far from the only one to do so. In fact, we've got one of them right here at The Oxford Club. Chief Investment Strategist Alexander Green sat down with Bill O'Reilly to discuss why he thinks the next two years will show us more wealth creation than the last two decades combined. You're not going to want to miss out on this. Buybacks and Pleasurable Investments Last year, instead of major new acquisitions, Berkshire focused on buying back its own shares. The company spent almost $25 billion on buybacks in 2020. That increased shareholders' value by about 5.2%. (When a company reduces the number of its shares in the market by purchasing them back, it increases the value of each share.) And that's what Buffett means when he quotes Mae West. The buybacks mean that you as a Berkshire shareholder get an even larger portion of that portfolio of businesses in the table above. Buffett also opines in his letter on the pleasures of investing in good companies. "Owning a non-controlling portion of a wonderful business is more profitable, more enjoyable and far less work than struggling with 100% of a marginal enterprise," he writes. Productive companies produce wealth over time, Buffett writes. All that's required for an investor to benefit from this phenomenon, he adds, is "the passage of time, an inner calm, ample diversification, and a minimization of transactions and fees." I often hear echoes of what Buffett says in the writings of our own investing experts. Alex often writes about the beauty of share ownership. "Most of us lack the time, the investment capital or the experience necessary to found or run a successful business," Alex says. "But with even a modest amount of money you can accumulate a stake in many of the world's finest businesses." That's just what Buffett has done. And you can do it too by saving, investing, and using the advice and wisdom we provide here at The Oxford Club. Let's get going! Enjoy your weekend and stay safe, Matt | 
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