I need to find some historical prices for Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNI) for tax purposes. The company was recently bought by Berkshire Hathaway, and its symbol is no longer traded. Every stock charting site I go to can’t give me historical data, because BNI no longer returns a hit.
Is there a site I can go to that will give me historical prices for a symbol that is not current? I’ve had no luck with Yahoo, MSN, MSNBC, Big Charts, Daily Finance, USA Today.
How about writing to Berkshire Hathaway?
That link returns a 404 error.
Try this site, or this one. You’ll need to enter a date range that ends before the stock symbol did (on 2/12/2010).
Thanks for the links. Between the BNSF site and Investor Point I was able to at least make some educated guesses. I had to figure the basis on a stock that was bought in the 60s, went through 2 mergers, several splits, and about a decade of quarterly dividend reinvestment.
I had to cheat and go with a stock price that was about 10-15 after the purchase, since 1980 is the earliest record I could find. I hope the IRS wouldn’t care too much, there is probably make less than $100 difference either way.
Don’t know if this information is of any use to you, but bear in mind that Burlington Northern Santa Fe did not exist prior to 1996. It was formed that year by a merger of two large railroads; Burlington Northern RR and Atchison Topeka & Santa Fe RR. The “Santa Fe” was an old-line company that had been around for years operating in the Southwest. Burlington Northern however, had only been extant since 1970 when it was formed by the merger of four class I railroads: The Northern Pacific, The Great Northern, the Chicago Burlington & Quincy, and the Spokane Portland & Seattle. Any research into BNSF history would probably have to include history of the predecessor roads.
SS
The stock in question was originally from Chicago Burlington & Quincy. The BNSF site had info on the conversion from CB&Q stock to Burlington Northern (3.25 BNI for each CB&Q), and when it merged with Santa Fe, it was 1:1, and the ticker remained BNI. The site also listed the splits along the way.
I can guess at how many shares of CB&Q there were originally, but I have no idea what the price was for them. The closest I can get is a share proce for Burlington Northern in 1980.
Along the way a portion got spun off as Burlington Resources, and the basis was divided between BNI and the new Burlington Resources stock. I have no idea what to do with that, so I’m pretending it didn’t happen.
If you buy stock for your child that you expect they will hold for 30 years, do them a favor and write the price and # of shares on the back of their birth certificate or something.