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How was this not planned for and fixed years ago? I can understand this happening for random stock ticker apps but NASDAQ?

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There was no sense of urgency because the closest to reaching the limit aside from Berkshire is several factors away. Also, Berkshire stock has surged ~30% in the past ~6 months which is far above usual performance.

Those aspects together probably allowed it to be deprioritized until it would be closer to being necessary (a classic tale).

It is rather funny to imagine Warren Buffett sitting there mumbling about stock splits and the incompetence of it all, and how in his day, you could buy a share for however much cash you wanted to without worrying about integers and bits and code.

Yeah, normally companies carry out a stock split way before the price reaches this level because having such a high price makes trading and holding their shares a bit of a pain. Berkshire Hathaway is just unusual in that Warren Buffett considers this an advantage. Also, I guess it's not the kind of company that usually has wild fluctuations in its share price - Buffett usually seems to go for boring businesses with steady returns.

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