Do You Want A Piece of Buffett?

According to the Wall Street Journal, for the first time Americans will be able to own a piece of Warren Buffett. Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc., whose multi-thousand-dollar share price made it a thinly traded luxury of wealthy investors and institutions, is going mainstream as it joins the the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index. More than 1 trillion dollars of investor money directly tracks this index. This is resulting in a scramble for Berkshire shares by index funds that, by one estimate, will reach 14 billion dollars of buying. Small-time investors, meanwhile, will finally be getting a piece of Buffett just as uncertainty about the future of of his 178 billion dollar conglomerate continues to rise. Buffet is 79 years old, and is entering the latter part of his career, and little is known about his succession plans, other than that he has placed the name of his replacement in an envelope he keeps in his office. The article in the Wall Street Journal goes on to say:

"Yet small investors are likely soon to have billions of dollars more in Berkshire stock, thanks both to its entry into the index and to a recent stock split.

Berkshire has long had two classes of stock. It split the lower-priced of these, known as the B shares, 50 to 1, making them affordable to more individual investors.

Joel Nath, a 25-year-old accountant who participates in an investment club called "Scratch & Win," always wanted to buy some Berkshire. The late-January split put the B shares, commonly known as Baby B's, within his reach. He bought nine at $73 each. (They closed Thursday at $76.69.)

Mr. Nath, who lives and works in Omaha, Neb., where Berkshire is based, was turned on to investing at a young age by his grandmother, Marlene Matney. While baby-sitting for him and his two brothers, Ms. Matney, now 78, taught them to look at ticker symbols on television when they were learning the alphabet.

More recently, Ms. Matney was disappointed when she wasn't allowed to join "Scratch & Win," because the investment club didn't want two members from the same family. But she still has an edge. In the aftermath of the stock split, Mr. Nath and his brothers all bought shares for more than $70 each, Ms. Matney said, "but they didn't know that I waited until it went down." She bought hers for $68.

Sensing opportunity in Berkshire's move to the S&P 500 index, hedge-fund manager Jonathan Carmel has already made his move to play the stock."

So my question to you is, would you be willing to invest in Buffett's company Berkshire, even though he is 79 and there is uncertainty of who is going to take over the company for him?