Munger Mode rating: 2 out of 5 — Sell. Our own rating from the research report below, on business quality first: moat durability and management, with price separating the top three.
We have known Goldman Sachs for the better part of a century between us, and we will say up front: this is the finest firm of its breed. That is precisely the trap. The question is never whether a business is the best casino operator on the strip — it is whether the casino itself is the kind of business we want to own forever, and at what price. Goldman just reported the most profitable quarter in its 157-year history — $20.3 billion of revenue, $20.98 of diluted earnings per share, a 23.5% annualized return on equity — and the stock, at roughly $1,027, trades at 2.8 times a book value of $367.67 per share. For a leveraged, cyclical, compensation-heavy capital markets firm whose ten-year average return on equity is closer to 12% than 23%, that is a price which assumes the boom is the new normal. Booms are never the new normal.
Recent filings analysed: 10-Q (2026-08-03), 8-K (2026-07-27), 8-K (2026-07-21), 8-K (2026-07-20).
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