Thread: Berkshire Annual Meeting anyone?

Is anyone going to be at the AM in Omaha this year?

I dont own any Berkshire stock. But see, Warren is really getting older. So I will absolutely take the chance and see one of the big investors of our time while its still possible.

Cant believe that no other fastlaner is actually here..? I am attending some meetings now and actually heard investors like Monish Pabrai talk to us in private. Charlie Munger just walked by on the hotel hallway (but had no time for pictures). There are just a lot of smart and passionate investors and businesspeople around..

Will definitely be here again next year (if anybody else will be in Omaha as well - let me know ;-) ).

I've kept my hands off investing up to this point, but I think I'm going to put some money in to berkshire by the end of the year.

Reading Warren Buffet's letters to shareholders should be mandatory reading for any investor or business owner. For book reading I would very highly recommend Poor Charlie's Almanack. I can't say enough good things about it.

It was pretty dark during the 5 hour Q&A session inside the Qwest Center and my pictures came out pretty lousy.
This is what it looks like (picture (c) National Post). The hall was filled with about 35,000 people. Buffett and Munger sit behind a table in front of the big screen. The board and managers of Berkshire sit in the front rows of the floor section. The rest of the people are the shareholders - first come, first serve.



Afterwards Buffett took the time to sign the international guests' books - but no cams allowed.

What I liked:
* to wait at the hotel bar until Bill Gates passes by on his way to the rest rooms (we gave up before it happened - I guess they had their own rest rooms;D)
* to talk to other German investors and business people on the private meeting prior to the actual shareholder's meeting
* to talk to some rather famous fund managers and investors who dropped in occasionally (i.e. Monish Pabrai)

It's amazing. At first I looked around me and saw 35,000 people. I guess many of these have their "shit together" and still they sit, wait and listen patiently. I mean, the Q&A takes 5 hours.. So I thought "now you are part of the madness. A modern business pilgrim".
After Buffett had finished and I got my book signed by him, I started to understand why people admire him. No, he is not the god of investing who came down to enlighten us humans. He just is a very smart, very experienced investor and business man who takes the time every year to patiently answer questions and put effort into the relationship to his shareholders. There were a couple of hundreds, if not a thousand, international shareholders lined up to get their books signed. And he did that - after 5h Q&A, 1h formal shareholder's meeting and perhaps a whole week packed with meetings, interviews etc. - and the guy is 75 or something like that.

So on the one hand he shares his wisdom and experience (and for the first time I really understood his business philosophy which - to me - seems to be more valuable to entrepreneurs and business people than to fund managers and investors).
On the other hand he is very down to earth. He is humble, patient and honest. And he is humorous and very sympathetic. His attitude and character are as least as inspiring as his business skills. (Obviously this does not mean he doesnt have any flaws - he has as many as everybody else.)

I had read some books and articles about Buffett before but I was still surprised to see such a "normal" old guy in front of me. I guess this transformation from some remote investment guru to a real person really "hit" me. After all, Buffett, too, is only a human being and won't take a dime with him when he will die. Which is why he leads a life he enjoys and does what he thinks is right. There are plenty of things that I find admirable and why I would consider him a role model: modesty, honesty, to do what you like and what you think is right, to invest in long-term relationships, persistence..

It's difficult to describe the "magic" of the Berkshire meeting now. It just had seemed so unlikely that all these people come together to sit in uncomfortable chairs and listen quietly for hours. They turned the formal annual meeting into a convention of like-minded people who share their admiration (and sometimes act like 40-year old groupies) for one of the great business men (for the lack of a better word) of our time. And it was absolutely worth it.

Yeah, most people were not too happy with their shares. I am not even a shareholder. I asked someone with an A-share for one of his invitations

there is a strong loyalty to Buffett's company. my in-laws have been shareholders for a long time (and go to Nebraska's shareholder meeting every year) and refuse to sell it no matter what.

Even when the hand writing was on the wall (financial & insurers melting down) 6-8 months ago they didn't sell any despite it making perfect sense to sell it and rebuy it at a later point.