Annual General Meeting Of Berkshire Hathaway

Try to Stay Rational Like These Two Gentlemen

- Abhishek Basumallick

Warren Buffett has perhaps the most enviable long term track record of compounding between 1965-2017, a period of just over 50 years, at an astounding rate of 20.8% per annum. His personal net worth has crossed $70 billion. But wealth is not the only reason investors flock every year to the “Woodstock for Capitalists” – the Annual General Meeting of Berkshire Hathaway. At age 86 and 93 respectively, Buffett and his partner and Berkshire Vice Chairman Charlie Munger are two of the most brilliant and wisest men around.

Since last year the Q&A session at the Berkshire Annual Meeting has been webcast live giving an opportunity to investors across the world to watch the Buffett-Munger duo in action, answering questions across various topics. Every year, there are some nuggets of wisdom that can be learnt from these sessions and this year was no different.

Munger and Buffett have spent their entire lives by sticking to their investment principles not chasing fads. “A lot of people are trying to be brilliant, and we are just trying to stay rational”, said Munger. Buying and holding great businesses over very long periods of time has been extremely rewarding. As Buffett aptly put, “We did not buy American Express or Wells Fargo or United Airlines or CocaCola with the idea that they would never have problems or they would never have competition. But we did buy them because we thought they had very, very strong brands”. Brands of course allow Buffett to invest in companies where he can predict consumer behavior in the long term.