Interesting call that you made switching into BRK RCS but I just...

Interesting call that you made switching into BRK RCS but I just wanted to point out for the other holders that BKI is a totally different investment proposition to something like a Berkshire as that has already come up once before recently.

BKI is better off being compared to the STW ASX 200 ETF or even more closely seen as a smaller scale AFI or ARG with a focus on holding well known Australian large caps and paying out reliable, smoothed out in the bad times, fully franked dividends to a shareholder base of largely retirees that rely on them and value the consistency of income rather than expecting management to set the world on fire with performance.

If you look at the long term figures they've essentially tracked the market while collecting a low management fee which is better than a lot of the more active LIC managers can currently say.

Berkshire is a huge holding company with a totally unique approach and structure (including never paying a dividend) which wholly owns businesses along with an equities portfolio.

They also hold huge amounts of cash and will wait many years for an opportunity (as they've very famously been doing for a very long time now) whereas BKI will always stay pretty much fully invested regardless of how high the market is.

Berkshire is a compounding machine rather than an income generator.

As an outside observer (but someone who holds SOL/BKW along with being a previous URB holder) I didn't agree with completely opening up the capital raise to everyone at a discount a few years ago but as a whole I think it's a bit of a shame to see management get a hard time and have their ethics regularly questioned on this forum as a lot of it is pretty harsh and personal. I think unfortunately in the case of Tom in particular being the younger generation of a family that's done very well and been successful people automatically have a negative perception and don't want to give him any credit or try and take a balanced view.

I've never met him personally but have had a couple of email conversations and a brief phone chat with him over my time as a SOL investor and always found him to be very down to earth and polite so I wanted to share something positive to balance things out on here.

I'd suggest having a listen to some of the podcasts these guys have done or reading their quarterly reports as they've definitely got a good handle on value investing.

It really comes down to your individual investment goals as to how suitable they are for you.