Warren Buffett does something unusual during Berkshire Hathaway's annual meeting.
He takes the stage, delivers some opening remarks, and then takes any and every question shareholders ask.
Unlike many CEOs, really most of them, the Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A) (BRK.B) boss takes questions not only from a select group of analysts who need to preserve their access to the company. At the May 6 meeting he alternated between answering people who were live at the meeting and shareholders from around the world.
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And while Buffett joked about deflecting questions to Charlie Munger and Ajit Jain, who were both on stage with him, he passed off only the ones that were specific to other managers. In most cases, even when the questions were uncomfortable, he did his best to offer honest answers.
That led to a lot of applause moments at the show, as Buffett tends to speak as if he's coming up with ideas for a 365-days-a-year quotes calendar.
It also led to some genuine laughs as the Oracle of Omaha tends to say just what he's thinking without couching it in language designed to not offend anyone.
Image source: Getty Images.
Buffett Shares His Thoughts On Value Investing
Early in the meeting, Buffett was asked about the future of value investing in an age with artificial intelligence and disruptive technologies. Munger and Buffett actually took fairly different approaches in their answers.
"I think value investors are going to have a harder time now that there's so many of them competing for a diminished bunch of opportunities," Munger said. "So my advice to value investors is 'get used to making less.'"
Buffett pointed out that Munger is not singing a new tune.
"Charlies has been telling me this almost the whole time we've known each other," he said. "...I would argue that there will be plenty of opportunities."
The Berkshire CEO made clear that he did not believe that changing technology made a difference in value investing. New things coming along, he explained, "do not take away the opportunities."
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"What gives you opportunities is other people doing dumb things," he said.
Buffett also made clear that he did not expect people to stop doing dumb things.
“In the 58 years we’ve been running Berkshire, I would say there’s been a great increase in the number of people doing dumb things, and they do big dumb things. The reason they do it is because, to some extent, they can get money from people so much easier than when we started,” he said.
"You can start 10 or 15 dumb insurance companies in the last 10 years, and you can become rich if you were adroit at it, whether the business succeeded or not," he added.
When Berkshire Hathaway started, he pointed out, you simply could not get the money for the types of ideas that get funded today.
“I would love to be born today, go out with not-too-much money and hopefully turn it into a lot of money,” Buffett said.
The Berkshire CEO also said that while Berkshire's scale makes growth a challenge, he sees lots of opportunities for people managing smaller amounts of money.
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