Tracing Berkshire Hathaway’s listing


Warren Buffett’s letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders (March 3, 1980) for Year 1999 gave readers a glimpse of Berkshire Hathaway’s listing. Here is a relevant excerpt:
“During 1979, NASDAQ trading was initiated in the stock of Berkshire Hathaway. This means that the stock now is quoted on the Over-the-Counter page of the Wall Street journal under ‘Additional OTC Quotes’. Prior to such listing, the Wall Street journal and the Dow-Jones news ticker would not report our earnings, even though such earnings were one hundred or more times the level of some companies whose reports they regularly picked up. Now, however, the Dow-Jones news ticker reports our quarterly earnings promptly after we release them and, in addition, both the ticker and the Wall Street journal report our annual earnings. This solves a dissemination problem that had bothered us.”

Recommended reading:

(1) The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America, Third Edition

(2) Berkshire Hathaway Letters to Shareholders, 1965-2013