The Warren Buffett show

Many years ago, my Dad got a great stock tip: Buy Berkshire Hathaway at $33,000 per share.  Alas, that was too steep for him at the time. Years later, when the B shares were created, he did buy some of those. Accordingly, he can go to the annual meeting if he wishes, and he can bring 3 guests. Five years ago, he took my Mom.

This year I mentioned to Dad my interest in going to hear Warren Buffett speak.  Mom came along for the trip, though her interest in investing is low to none. We preceded the visit to Omaha with an excellent trip to Branson.

When my folks went the meeting five years ago, there were about 5,000 attendees.  They took in the cocktail party Friday, the barbecue Saturday night, the brunch on Sunday. This year, I heard later, there were 30,000 attendees.  The cocktail party was an absolute zoo, so we skipped the other free meals.

The meeting started at 9:30, the movie at 8:30, so we planned to get to the arena at about 8:00.  Big mistake.  The traffic to the arena was backed up about a mile, three of the four parking lots at the arena were already full.  We took our seats at about 8:45.  Turns out the doors were scheduled to open at 7 am, but they opened early because it was unseasonably cold (presumably because of global warming). When thanked for this courtesy by a questioner, Buffett responded that if Berkshire sold coats they would not have opened the doors early.

My first impression:  Can the shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway really be this young?  Loads of 20-somethings, 30-somethings.  I guess they must be, because guest privileges couldn’t account for all of it. Second impression:  It would be great if they streamed this to the internet, to reduce costs and congestion all around.

I had thought to mention some of the meeting highlights, but the NYTimes Dealbook blog beat me to it.  The Breaking Bad bit during the movie was particularly good.  The contrast between Buffett and Munger was striking, they make a great team. The questions were mostly intelligent, the answers always were.  I'd like to go again next year.