[ericmay]

> I would love to "have to" buy a bunch of apple stock at much less than the current trading price! Most companies would also love that.

…Sure but they also have to buy the other assets.

> I'm not assuming that, I'm just wondering why they wouldn't buy more if they think it's worth much more.

I’m not sure why you are insistent about ignoring factors such as portfolio risk, price targets, time horizons, and Berkshire’s own internal financial modeling.

I’m even more confused about your comment that

> But that leads back to me being confused on why they bought more in this indirect way, because if they got a big discount I don't understand why.

Is it because you’re forgetting that they acquired these assets by purchasing another company?

[Dylan16807]

> …Sure but they also have to buy the other assets.

Which were already sold off, apparently. So I'm ignoring them in this calculation, as an offset against the purchasing price, to make it a pure matter of dollars per share of apple.

> portfolio risk

Clearly not enough of a factor if they're buying more.

> price targets, time horizons, and Berkshire’s own internal financial modeling.

How do those do more than tell you what the stock is worth? I'm talking about the output of those calculations, and what you should do with it based on where it relates to the current price.

> Is it because you’re forgetting that they acquired these assets by purchasing another company?

I'm not forgetting that. I'm saying that if a big company was acquired "much cheaper" than its assets, then surely other entities should have been bidding on it, driving up the price until it's close to the value of the assets.

Let's pretend Berkshire had sold the AAPL too. That would mean they bought a company, immediately sold off "everything but AAPL" for one pile of money, immediately sold off AAPL for another pile of money, and ended up making a big profit. That doesn't make sense. Who sold it to them for such a large loss instead of shopping around?