27 May The Berkshire Hathaway Annual General Meeting
As many of you are aware I am a huge fan of Warren Buffett. As the third richest man with all of his wealth created through investing he is known as the most successful investor of all time! Had you invested $10,000 into his holding company back in 1965, that investment would now be worth over $250 million.
Last year I attended the Berkshire Hathaway Annual General Meeting with another 40,000 investors. While I was not fortunate enough to attend again this year, I have outlined a few quotes from the conference below. If you want to be a successful investor I strongly recommend you read as many book as you can about Warren Buffett. Better still go to www.berkshirehathaway.com and download the annual letters to shareholders for free. His annual letters written by Buffett himself give you a rare insight into the Oracle of Omaha and his investment methodology – Happy reading.
Over the weekend, Omaha’s Orpheum Theatre hosted Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting. The event saw more than 40,000 queue for a chance to hear the wisdom of one of the world’s most celebrated investors, Berkshire chief executive Warren Buffett.
The annual event draws the best investment minds from across the globe, including Microsoft founder Bill Gates who I was lucky enough to meet last year.
Below are just some of the collected snipers of wisdom from two investors with decades of experience at the top of the game.
“Cash and credit is like oxygen. You don’t notice it 99 per cent of the time, but if it’s absent you notice it straight away. We will keep $20bn and we will never worry about any event that will prevent us from playing our game.” – Munger
“We were barely smart enough to buy it. If there’s any secret we have, it’s ignorance removal. And the nice thing is we still have a lot of ignorance left to remove.” – Munger
“We over-trust carefully selected people and it’s worked very well for us.” – Munger
“I don’t think we have ever had a policy that loves overstaffing.” – Munger
“The nature of boards is that they are part business and part social, and people behave sometimes with their business brain and sometimes with their social brain.” – Buffett
“Corporate CEOs as a group would be paid a lot less if proxy statements didn’t reveal how much they are getting. American shareholders are paying a significant price to be able to see how much the top five earners are making. We are way better off without adding to the culture of envy.” – Munger
“A lot of people are over-claiming that they know the impact. We are agnostic. Its not there isn’t global warming because there is, but those that say they know its impact are talking out of their hats.” – Munger
“I wish my main problem in life was fear of succession problems. I think we are in very good shape.” – Munger
About Charlie – “He is my canary in the coalmine. He turned 90 and I find it encouraging how he is handling middle age”. – Buffett
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