Fantastic meeting

Stocks A to Z
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This meeting was indeed different for me in some important ways.

Buffett came prepared to address some issues, no matter the questions asked: Bitcoin, excessive trading allowing him to buy 14% of OXY in two weeks, Activision, Munger’s guidance on “very practical matters” from the past, the farce called Fairness opinions, buying Joe Brandon back, Tribalism in the USA, overcoming mental illusions by critical reading and on and on.

I don’t about others but I have hated the recent years (say, the past 5-7 years) because of the format. The presence of 3 analysts and 3 journalists on stage along with a whole bunch of dumb questions in the audience was in effect “running the clock”. I hated the format.

Buffett fixed it this time. He gave himself airtime on preselected issues important for owners. In prior meetings there were over 60 questions- 36 from the 6 folks on stage , the rest from the audience in the arena. Most of those were silly questions anyway. This time, there were 20 total. 10 from Betty Q which she did okay with on some, many of hers were “more of the same” as what was asked by the audience. I’ll be even happier Betty also gets the boot next year. Running the clock on 99/91 year old wizards is stupid. Let them say whatever the hell they want to say, it’s way better than the peanut gallery questions!

Fantastic meeting for me similar to Munger on oil, “My opinion is not shared by anyone else; I think they’re all wrong”.

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Buffett came prepared with charts to address what he and Munger wanted to talk about. Buffett and Munger came with the intention to address market issues and really, macroeconomic problems that result from inflation and a “wartime economy”.

Many years ago, Buffett made the comment that “during all wartime economies, cash was devalued”. Munger said at the annual meeting regarding spending so much money quickly buying stock, “We found things we’d rather have than T-Bills”.

In the Charlie Rose interview, Buffett mentioned he had important information to relay at the annual meeting to all Berkshire shareholders at the same time. Rather than a rehash of addressing the same old questions, Buffett and Munger took the conversation where they wanted. They were reiterating, Berkshire will be here. Review the recorded meeting and read between the lines. They were carefully issuing caution and warnings.

The years, decades ago, when I first attended Berkshire Annual meetings, that were essentially a weekend MBA regarding Berkshire have long been over. The questions became repeated and superfluous.

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