[gwern]

This is a shockingly boring and cursory annual letter. Most of it reads like a copy-paste from all of the previous letters (retained earnings, bonds bad, why non-Berk conglomerates suck, insurance float is awesome, etc). OK, it's nice that Apple did some stock buybacks, and that they did too. Uh, what else? It was a whole year.

And what a year - what it doesn't say is far more important than what it does. Where's the grappling with the fact that their 2020 return was only 2% when the indexes are up 20%? (Did I read that right?!) For that matter, shouldn't the fact that their return in 2020 was so low be grounds for very serious soul-searching? Buffett has always justified the cash reserves and passive investing as enabling him to make awesome deals during the proverbial rainy day. Well, was not 2020 the mother of all rainy days? Where are his deals? If he couldn't do anything with his bankroll in 2020, when is he ever going to be able to do anything with it? What did they do all year? Does he really have no thoughts about how the pandemic was handled? About Western governance and economics? Is it not astonishing that the sole and only reference I noticed to coronavirus is a throwaway clause about some furniture stores being closed? WTF. This is not at all the letter I was expecting.

Has anyone seen Buffett in person recently? Are we sure he wasn't kidnapped and replaced with Deepfaked Zoom calls a year ago?

[skybrian]

I suspect he and his ghostwriters are saying less and less on purpose. Why take a stand on an even mildly controversial issue at this point? (And everything is controversial now.) He has nothing to prove.

We might as well ask why his shareholder letters were interesting before? It’s a fairly unusual tradition.

Maybe the next CEO will have something to say, but it’s pretty optional.