QuestionerYou mentioned you prefer to buy private businesses because of the tax advantages and your attraction to the people in those businesses. Are you finding today that there are better purchases within the private market versus in the public securities market?
WarrenWell, I would answer that no. We do not – we very seldom find something to buy on a negotiated basis for an entire business. We have certain size requirements, big limiting factors, it has to be something we can understand. I mean, that eliminates 95 percent of the businesses, and we get – we don't pay any attention to them, but we get lots of proposals for things that are just totally outside the boundaries of what we've already said we're interested in. We prefer to buy entire businesses or 80 percent or greater interest in businesses, partly for the tax reasons you mentioned. And frankly, we like it better. We just – it's the kind of business we would like to build if we had our absolute druthers on it. Counter to that is we can usually get more for our money in wonderful businesses in terms of buying little pieces of them in the market, because the market is far more inefficient in pricing businesses than is the negotiated market. You're not going to buy any bargains. I mean, you shouldn't – you shouldn't even approach the idea of buying a bargain in a – in a negotiated purchase. You want to buy it from people that are going to run it for you. They want to buy it from people who are intelligent enough to price their business properly. And they are. I mean, that's the way things are. The market does not do that. The market, in the stock market, you get a chance to buy businesses at foolish prices. And that is why we end up with a lot of money in marketable securities. If we absolutely had our choice, we would own a group of – we would own three times the number of businesses we own. own outright. We're unlikely to get that opportunity over time, but periodically we'll get the chance to find something that fits our tests. And in between, we will, when the market offers us the right prices, we will buy more, either businesses we already own pieces of, or we'll buy one or two new ones. Some things usually going on. There are tax advantages to owning all of them, but that's more than offset by the fact that You'll never get a chance to buy – you'll never get a chance to buy the whole Coca-Cola company or the whole Chile company. Businesses like that, the sensational businesses, are just not available. Sometimes you get a chance to make a sensible purchase in the market of such businesses.