Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
- Berkshire Hathaway’s Class A is the costliest stock in the world, with its price sitting at roughly $300,000 a share.
- This is primarily due to CEO Warren Buffett’s choice to not split the shares as they rise in value. He once said that keeping the share price so high drives away traders looking to make a quick buck.
- Here are a few luxuries you could buy for the same price as a single share of BRK.A, ranging from 151,000 lottery tickets to two houses.
- Watch Berkshire Hathaway Class A trade here live.
Berkshire Hathaway Class A continues to be the priciest stock in the US, sitting at roughly $300,000 a share.
The high price is partially due to Warren Buffett’s decision to avoid splitting the stock, a move that increases the number of shares available while lowering their prices accordingly. Buffett once said a stock split for Berkshire Class A would open the doors to day traders looking to grab quick returns and ignore the CEO’s buy-and-hold strategy.
"I don’t want anybody buying Berkshire thinking that they can make a lot of money fast," Buffett said in a biography. "They’re not going to do it, in the first place. And some of them will blame themselves, and some of them will blame me."
He continued: "They’ll all be disappointed. I don’t want disappointed people."
The company’s Class A shares are down about 1% year-to-date. Here’s what selling a single share of Berkshire Class could buy you right now:
151,000 tickets for the Mega Millions lottery
AP Photo/G-Jun Yam
Price: $302,000
Why settle with percentage-point returns when you could chase a billion-dollar pot? A 2018 Mega Millions lottery saw its jackpot reach $1.54 before a South Carolina resident won the drawing.
The odds were 1 in 303 million, but selling one share of BRK.A for $2 lottery tickets would have improved your chances to about 1 in 1,961.
1,400 shares of Apple
AP
Price: $300,230
About 4% — or $51 billion — of Berkshire’s holdings are in Apple stock, according to the company’s last 13F filing. Buffett has repeatedly praised the tech giant, saying in February he’d buy more shares if the stock were "cheaper." The tech giant opened at $214.45 per share Friday.
Apple stock is about 25% higher than its February prices, but if one were to mimic Buffett, they could buy 1,400 shares for the price of a one BRK.A share. The purchase would leave them owning just 0.000003% of Apple’s market cap.
3 Audemars Piguet watches
Thomson Reuters
Price: $287,100 ($95,700 per watch)
For a more material representation of your stock trade, you could adorn both wrists and an ankle with an Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Perpetual Calendar.
The gold-cased watch retails for $95,700 and requires adjustment every 125 years and 317 days, leaving your heirs with the trouble of scheduling the appointment.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
See Also:
- MORGAN STANLEY: These 11 large tech companies are most likely to get acquired within the next 12 months
- Millions of millennials are investing in 529 savings plans to pay for their kid’s college. One of the best young wealth managers in the US explains why that’s a mistake.
- MORGAN STANLEY: The stock market’s rally to new highs is masking 3 under-the-radar warning signs that danger lies ahead
Source: Business Insider – bwinck@businessinsider.com (Ben Winck)