How Berkshire Hathaway’s Combs and Weschler Performed in 2014

By Dr. David Kass PhD, Harvard University

After outperforming the S&P 500 and Warren Buffett in both 2012 and 2013, Todd Combs and Ted Weschler, appear to have underperformed  the S&P 500 in 2014.

Combs and Weschler are each managing about $7.5 billion of the $120 billion equity portfolio of Berkshire Hathaway.  Their largest investments, DirecTV (DTV) and DaVita (DVA), performed very well, with each outperforming the S&P 500 by about 10 percentage points.  DTV (Combs and Weschler) and DVA  (Weschler) are each currently valued at more than $2.5 billion.

However, their investments in General Motors ($1.3 billion) (Weschler) is down 20% this year, and Chicago Bridge & Iron ($500 million) (Combs) has lost about 50% of its value.  By...