Sailesh's blog

I have finally decided to join the blogsphere and publish my thoughts to the world.. Lets see if anyone is listening..

Sunday, May 07, 2006

Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting

Thanks to my friend and co-worker Jason, I got a chance to fly to Omaha and attend the annual meeting of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. For those of you who dont know the difference between a stock and a bond, BRK is the holding company of Warren Buffet, the second richest man on the planet.

First about Omaha: I like this town!! Its all very green in spring and the weather is cool.. very pleasant... but very importantly, the people seem very friendly. From my conversations with bar staff and waitresses to my friendly interactions with police officers, I came away with the impression that mid-western hospitality is definitely not a myth.

The BRK annual meeting is a big event held in the Qwest center in downtown omaha. Its quite festive with around 24,000 people in attendance this time. Tip: you need to get there very early to get to ask Warren questions, but you can sleep in if all you want is to see him speak.

Most of the day is a long QA session where Warren and his taciturn partner Charlie Munger answer a variety of questions. The topics ranged from impact of immigration on BRK companies to whether Warren can help his shareholders donate to charity with the same kind of diligence as he picks his companies.

My single biggest lesson: The strategy that Warren uses to pick companies and stock isnt rocket science. Its the incompetance of all those Wall Street analysts who earn enormous salaries but produce returns no better than the S & P that make Warren a super star.

Warren is just a reasonably smart guy who diligently spends his time understanding a company to a minute detail before deciding to invest. He only invests in companies he understands and can predict their performance. Thats why right now he is sitting on a corpus of about $40 billion.. he just hasnt found any good companies to invest in.

I'll write more in another post... am waiting to see what Jason has to say on his experiences..

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