The Berkshire Hathaway Shareholders' Meeting is being streamed live Saturday 9 pm Irish time

Brendan Burgess

Brendan Burgess

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Warren Buffett will be speaking to the world on Saturday, May 2 at Berkshire Hathaway’s (BRK-A, BRK-B) 2020 Annual Shareholder Meeting.

Unlike previous years, shareholders will not be allowed to attend the event in person due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, the Q&A portion will be abbreviated.

But as usual, the meeting will be a must-watch event for students of investing as the “Oracle of Omaha” shares his wisdom amid one of the worst public health and economic crises in history.

“I’ll certainly be there!” Buffett told Yahoo Finance.

Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway’s CEO, and Greg Abel, Berkshire’s vice chairman of non-insurance operations, will both be in physical attendance, and they will be fielding questions from journalists Becky Quick, Carol Loomis, and Andrew Ross Sorkin.

Vice chairman and Buffett’s right-hand man Charlie Munger will not be in attendance. Berkshire’s other directors will also not be attending the event in person.

Here are the details of the Yahoo Finance’s exclusive livestream of the event:



It's 4 pm Eastern Time, which I think is 9 pm Irish time.

Brendan
 
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It’s well worth looking at his annual letter on Berkshire Hathaway website. It’s always a great read.
 
They are off...

So far it's a long history lesson on the progress of America.

Civil war
Spanish flu
1929 Crash & Great Depression

We don't know how the economy will develop as a result of Covid, but in retrospect, it will look like a bump in the long-term progress of America

Stockmarket fell 90% from its peak

But 4,000 banks failed and people lost all their savings

The FDIC now has €100 billion of assets and has not cost the taxpayer a cent. It's a mutual insurance company.

1954 The Dow went from 280 to 400 at year end. That was the best year I had. When it hit 381 - the level it reached in 1929 before the crash, people thought it was going to crash again.

The Senate Finance Committee in March 1955 had an enquiry to know had we gone crazy again.
 
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I know that America is going to move forward over time

But I don't know what will happen tomorrow, next week, or next month.

2015 - Sam Nunn said: "Germs don't have borders"

We run Berkshire assuming that a lot of things can go wrong at the same time. Which is why you should not have any borrowing.

If you own equities over a long period of time you will get fine results.

They are an enormously sound investment. They will outperform bonds and cash and inflation.

Stocks are just a small part of a business.
 
Stocks are just a small part of a business.

You should not form an opinion on its value from minute to minute.

If you bet on America for the long term and ignore fluctuations in value, you will do very well

(I got distracted by a phone call, but I think he has sold his holdings in Airlines this month.

The airline business has changed in a major way. I don't know if in two or three years, people will be flying as much as they have been.

They have been hit by a low probability event.
 
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Brendan Burgess said:
If you bet on America for the long term and ignore fluctuations in value, you will do very well
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But what about Europe, what about the rest of the world, thats what I was referring to earlier. Can we be as confident as he is about the future of America? In this regard he is almost like Trump
 
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joe sod said:
But what about Europe, what about the rest of the world, thats what I was referring to earlier. Can we be as confident as he is about the future of America? In this regard he is almost like Trump
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I can't belive that you've just insulted The Sage of Omaha, by suggesting that he's anything like Trump ;)

America is a massive capitalist economy, with many of the worlds biggest multinationals and a "can do" attitude. That's why he's positive about the US. That's before you consider that he's probably proud of his county and has a hell of a lot of peoples money invested in US based companies.

In fairness, or very own Paschal was taking a somewhat similar "we can do it" type approach, when talking about rebuilding our economy and creating jobs again, post Covid-19, in one or two of his recent speeches.

Some of the larger European countries would have far more socialist like policies than the USA, led by a country with a near obsession throughout the last couple of decades, with keeping inflation below 2% pa, so I would expect Europe to grow a lot slower than the USA (albeit, Europe will have a better work life balance, better healthcare, education etc across its people)
 
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Overall I was disappointed, but probably because I had set my expectations too high.

He took well over an hour to give us the history of America and why you should invest in stocks for the long term and why you should ignore the bumps in the road like Covid.

I stopped watching when he got to the formal part of the meeting so I missed the Q&A.

He is some guy - at 89 , able to talk like that without a break and without assistance.
 
He repeated a variation of the Mr Market story which I think might have been Benjamin Graham's.

You own 50% of a good business which is generating profits, but has good years and bad years, as most businesses do.

Your partner in the business is a manic depressive. Every day, he names a price. He will either buy your share of the business at that price or sell you his share of the business at that price.

Sometimes he is depressed and pessimistic and you can get a great bargain by buying.
Other times he is optimistic and you can sell your share of the business at a great price.

But you should ignore Mr Market. If you are a part-owner of a well-run business, then keep your investment for the long term, irrespective of what Mr Market thinks.

This is the situation every shareholder faces. The prices of my shares in good companies like CRH, DCC, Ryanair etc. fluctuate wildly. I can sell them if I think the price is too high. I can buy more if I think that the price is too low.

The problem for me is that I can not value them any more accurately than Mr Market.

Brendan
 
Brendan Burgess said:
Stocks are just a small part of a business.

You should not form an opinion on its value from minute to minute.

If you bet on America for the long term and ignore fluctuations in value, you will do very well

(I got distracted by a phone call, but I think he has sold his holdings in Airlines this month.

The airline business has changed in a major way. I don't know if in two or three years, people will be flying as much as they have been.

They have been hit by a low probability event.
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Yes he sold his holdings in four airlines.

Why were you disappointed and what has been your expectations.
 
Hi Bronte

It was very long winded. It took over an hour for him to say what he could have said in a few minutes. So I got bored.

He emphasised the old ideas and encouraged people to stay the course which was good.

But I got no new insights.

Brendan
 
Brendan Burgess said:
Overall I was disappointed, but probably because I had set my expectations too high.
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He was speaking much quieter and much less energy than before, even compare this with the very upbeat buffet we saw at the end of February it's a big change. I think this has shaken him up much more than anything else beforehand.
But maybe it says more about us than it does about him , that we are looking towards a 90 year old man for guidance on how to navigate this time. Maybe he is getting tired of the whole "sage of omaha" stuff and everyone looking to him on what to do.
 
buffet never says anything new , amongst the folksy chuckling , it can be summarised as follows

" i dont know where the market will be in ten years but higher "

" stocks are cheap because interest rates are so low "

" i once went on a bender and drank three cans of cherry coke in one evening "
 
Alot of articles over the last week about Buffet doing nothing during the market crash and actually selling his airline stocks into extreme weakness. He was not following his own mantra "be greedy when others are fearfull" and seemed to be paralysed with fear himself not knowing what to do. Its also the case that the Central banks flooded the markets with money quickly so nobody needed Buffets billions this time, they got it at much better terms from the Central banks.
A few years ago he was a big shareholder in Tesco and then when trouble hit he also sold that into weakness aswell, now Tesco is flying again and prospering in this corona virus lockdown. I thought shareholdings to him were like buying a farm never to be sold. In many cases especially lately he is not doing what he preaches.
 
It’s interesting that since retail investors started really buying into Berkshire, it hasn’t done as well. A lot of the outperformance is historic.
 
Hi Joe

The great thing about Buffett is that he is prepared to admit his mistakes. He does not hold onto shares when he has made a mistake or when the environment has completely changed.

He bought into AIB and when he realised that it was a mistake, he cut his losses.

He bought into airlines when they were a good long-term investment. But he says that the environment has changed so he sold out.

I don't think that he has any choice except selling into weakness as you put it. I am sure that there are other examples, where he sold out into weakness and the shares weakened further.

Brendan
 
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