I’m going to dial back (which is to say omit entirely) the sarcasm and snark I typically employ while editorializing around Berkshire Hathaway’s results.

This is the first quarterly update since Charlie Munger’s death and Warren Buffett’s first annual letter penned in the absence of his business partner. There’s nothing to be gained (and something to be lost) from adopting a mocking or derisive cadence in the service of cheap humor at Warren’s expense going forward. So I won’t be doing it.

While wishing Buffett as many additional years as nature sees fit to afford him, one of history’s greatest business partnerships suggests Charlie and Warren were meant to be alive on this earth together. I worry that any alternative state of affairs may prove short-lived.

Buffett’s annual letter was chock-full of the usual folk wisdom and, I won’t hesitate to say, the genuine article: Actual wisdom, or at least when it comes to investing. “Within capitalism, some businesses will flourish for a very long time while others will prove to be sinkholes,” Buffett wrote. “It’s harder than you would think to predict which will be the winners and losers. And those who tell you they know the answer are usually either self-delusional or snake-oil salesmen.”

There you go. People (Buffett among them) often skirt the issue when it comes to what Warren’s actually saying about markets and the characters who dabble in them, even as his words leave no room for doubt: The vast majority of those operating in capital markets are deluded, crooks or both. In the context of businessmen (and women) Buffett, citing an 1863 letter from America’s first Comptroller, warned on the perils of “rascals,” and specially on the misplaced faith in the notion that they can be dissuaded. “People are not that easy to read. Sincerity and empathy can easily be faked,” he wrote. “That is as true now as it was in 1863.” Frankly, I think it’s immeasurably more true now than it was then.

I have to admit — and I’m not just saying this because I feel bad for Warren following what I have to believe was a grievous personal loss — I enjoyed this year’s annual letter. It made me want to go to Omaha. I imagine most readers will peruse it for themselves, so I’ll skip the lengthy treatment in favor of quickly highlighting the passages which garnered the lion’s share of the Berkshire-related headlines over the weekend. Here are those passages:

Berkshire now has — by far — the largest GAAP net worth recorded by any American business. Record operating income and a strong stock market led to a year-end figure of $561 billion. The total GAAP net worth for the other 499 S&P companies — a who’s who of American business — was $8.9 trillion in 2022. (The 2023 number for the S&P has not yet been tallied but is unlikely to materially exceed $9.5 trillion.) By this measure, Berkshire now occupies nearly 6% of the universe in which it operates. Doubling our huge base is simply not possible within, say, a five-year period, particularly because we are highly averse to issuing shares (an act that immediately juices net worth). There remain only a handful of companies in this country capable of truly moving the needle at Berkshire, and they have been endlessly picked over by us and by others. Some we can value; some we can’t. And, if we can, they have to be attractively priced. Outside the US, there are essentially no candidates that are meaningful options for capital deployment at Berkshire. All in all, we have no possibility of eye-popping performance.

There are two main takeaways. First, Buffett’s so big now that virtually nothing can move the needle. Second, he doesn’t see a lot of great opportunities.

Of course, those two things are related. What you count in your opportunity set is in part a function of what has the potential to move the needle for you. The smaller you are, the more opportunities there tend to be in that regard. The good news for the rest of us when it comes to moving our personal needles is that we’re not Buffett. (As a quick aside, I suppose you could argue that being so large that nothing moves the needle is actually a good problem to have.)

Naturally given the lack of apparent cash-deployment opportunities, Buffett’s reserve pile hit another record at nearly $168 billion.

I always use the same chart header: “Too much money.” That’s an allusion to the same dynamic Buffett discussed in his annual letter. There’s a lot of surplus firepower, but nowhere to deploy it. Buffett’s presumably getting somewhere in the neighborhood of 5% on all that cash, an unfathomable sum on its own.

Berkshire spent more than $2 billion on buybacks in Q4, taking the total for 2023 beyond $9 billion. In the face of a D.C. backlash against buybacks, Buffett last year emphasized, in somewhat caustic terms, that there’s nothing inherently nefarious about share repurchases. It’s not buybacks that are the problem, rather people who do them at bad prices and for the wrong reasons.

In Q4, operating earnings for Berkshire’s railroads as well as those for utilities and energy fell on a YoY basis. The insurance businesses did well in 2023.

In the letter, Buffett had the following to say about investing in general, and US equities more specifically:

I can’t remember a period since March 11, 1942 — the date of my first stock purchase — that I have not had a majority of my net worth in equities, US-based equities. And so far, so good. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell below 100 on that fateful day in 1942 when I “pulled the trigger.” I was down about $5 by the time school was out. Soon, things turned around and now that index hovers around 38,000. America has been a terrific country for investors. All they have needed to do is sit quietly, listening to no one.

A lot of readers would scoff at the notion that this (investing) is that simple, and some of you might argue it really wasn’t that simple for Buffett, who effectively built a giant equity portfolio with income earned from writing puts (i.e., collecting insurance premiums).

Still, Buffett serves as a necessary reminder that at the end of the day, “patience pays,” as he put it Saturday. My only real quibble is that we won’t all live to be 93 (or 99). If tomorrow’s “your time,” so to speak, you’re a fool not to spend everything you have today. More often than not, though, living life like there’s no tomorrow is a good way to be broke next week.