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Comment by Aeolun | Hacker News Reader

I don’t think Buffet should be forced to do anything simply because the exchange cannot keep up with the increase in price.

It’s not like they haven’t seen this coming for literal years.

Maybe they were assuming he’d give in?

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Well, this isn’t really that big of a problem. Just let the price overflow. That should make it easier for them to just split the stock next time they get there ;)

With all the weird structures of stock lending and synthetics going around, I believe it's been extremely valuable for Buffet to keep it as it is for all these years.

Can you explain? I nhought a stock split just multplied at stock counts after a certain date; seems straight forward.

You’re correct, the GP’s entire post is wrong, see my sibling comment to your post.

There are no exchange traded options on BRK.A, lending shares to be shorted gives you interest on the total $ value, not the number of shares. Neither of these are the reason for not splitting.

Aren't options contracts standardized on 100 shares? That would definitely make a difference.

It's not just the exchange that struggles:

1. Many retail investors do not have the funds to buy a full share.

2. Anyone who makes a spreadsheet containing the share prices of largest companies has to make that column wide enough to accommodate 6 digit numbers.

He created BRKB for just this purpose. He doesn't need to split BRKA for any reason other than Nasdaq's computers

Creating a second class of share is a very very bad solution: It splits exchange liquidity. It also complicates all the investor relations correspondence, adding lawyer fees.

I think they’re doing fine regardless.

Just because you’re powerful does that give you the right to be more difficult?

Yes.

If not having power, that seems upsetting. But...thats how power works, otherwise it isn't powerful.

I think you can be considerate and powerful, but maybe I’m in the minority!

Different class shares should be illegal.

A huge fraction of publicly traded companies have preferred stock in addition to their standard ticker... They just have different terms (eg pricing vs underlying, dividends, etc).

And why's that?

Because the owner of the other class of share believes themselves to own part of the company, but they don't. It's confusing. What you really own is some sort of bond from the company that guarantees they will pay you an amount equivalent to a dividend or something, not a share of the company.

> Because the owner of the other class of share believes themselves to own part of the company, but they don't.

Shares, whether in one class or many, are packages of claims against the company, not really ownership of the company in the simple sense. That’s fairly fundamental to the corporate form as distinct from, say, partnerships.

Because shares express ownership, and ownership is defined by being able to make decisions about the owned thing.

>1. Many retail investors do not have the funds to buy a full share.

That is a feature, not a bug

Yes Smithers we don't want the "poor's" getting their greasy fingers on our shares :-)

This also leads to those dodgy partial share adverts targeting younger unexperienced investors which is not a good thing in the long run.

Many mobile platforms/brokers let you but fractions of a share now.

Most of modern retail platforms offer fractional shares.

I don't know of any platform that offers that in my country.

at this point he may be holding out to hit that limit

Good Guy Buffett, testing the exchange for them.

Or just kick them off the index

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