Good morning. The FT’s Eric Platt, along with our data team, has published a terrific read on Berkshire Hathaway and whether its heirs apparent can pick stocks as well as Warren Buffett. Read it; it is a great piece of reporting, and a good demonstration of how hard it is to assess what is going on inside the last great American conglomerate. I will weigh in after the rest of the series is published. Meanwhile, email me your thoughts: [email protected]. 

The Frozen Fed

Yesterday, I wrote that the Federal Reserve was “stuck”, with “no choice to await an improvement in the data before cutting rates”. It turns out “stuck” was, if anything, too weak a word. The Fed, on the evidence of yesterday’s statement and chair Jay Powell’s press conference, is utterly frozen between two poles, unable to even gesture in either direction.

On one side, the central bank wants to be absolutely clear that there will be no cuts until the news on inflation improves. This was made clear in the statement. The phrase “lack of further progress” was right there in the first paragraph. In the second paragraph the point was hammered home by a shift from the present continuous into the present perfect . “Risks . . . are moving into better balance” was the message in the March statement. Now the risks “have moved towards better balance over the past year”. Progress, the Fed acknowledges, is drifting into the past.