[0:03]
QuestionerWhere could he be?
OtherHi, Charlie. I'm Susan Luchy.
CharlieOh, haven't you heard about the deal between Warren and me? He's going to be a big star at all my children, and I'm going to be taking over Berkshire Hathaway. There are some changes I really think we need to make around here. The first thing we need to look at is our dividend policy. I have never heard of anything so cheap and so unfair to our wonderful shareholders.
WarrenOne minute. What's that talk about dividends that I hear? Okay, Charlie, let's get this show on the road now. Charlie and I will take a break at noon because we will probably, by that time, finished all of the things we have up here to eat and we'll need to have lunch.
QuestionerCan you expand on where the market's going from here?
WarrenWell, I can expand, but I couldn't answer. Charlie and I haven't the faintest idea where the stock market is going to go next. week, next month, or next year. We never talk about it, you know, it never comes up. What we see when we look at the stock market is we see thousands and thousands and thousands of companies priced every day, and we ignore 99.9% of what we see, although we run our eyes over them, and then every now and then we see something that looks like it's attractively priced to us as a business. Forget about the word stock. You really need in the investment world, someone very solid, someone you trust, reasonable analytical skills, but you also need someone that actually can contemplate problems that haven't popped up yet, but which are starting to become possibilities. And that's a rare quality. I mean, that inability to envision something, that doesn't show up in your past model, you know, can be fatal. And they say, well, the whole secret of investment is diversification. That's the mantra. They've got it exactly back assword. The whole secret of investment is to find places where it's safe and wise to non-diversify. It's just that simple. Diversification is for the no-nothing investor. It's not for the professional. you will find opportunities that if you put 20% of your net worth in it, you have wasted the opportunity of a lifetime, you know, in terms of not really loading up. We know very, very, very early in the conversation, whether somebody's talking about something that there's any chance is actionable by us. And we don't worry about the ones we miss. The truth is, if we can't make a decision in five minutes, we can't make it in five months.
[3:29]
QuestionerDo you know and believe in Jesus Christ? and have a personal relationship with him.
WarrenNo, I'm an agnostic, and I grew up in a religious household, and if you'd ask that question of my mother or father, you'd have gotten a different answer, but, and I'm a true agnostic. I'm not closer to either a theist or an atheist. I simply don't know, and maybe someday I'll know and maybe someday I'll know and maybe someday I won't, but that's the nature of being an agnostic.
QuestionerWell, my children, I would like to hear from both of you as far as as the temptation to keeping up with the Joneses.
WarrenYeah, just tell them to keep up with the Buffers.
QuestionerWhat is your fondest hope for Berkshire Hathaway moving forward in time?
WarrenI hope for decent performance, and I hope that the culture we have is maintained, which is both shareholder-oriented and manager-oriented, and that we are regarded as the best home in the world for large, wonderful family businesses.
OtherI would like to see Berkshire even more deserved to be an exemplar, and I would like to see it have more actual influence on changes in other corporations. I think there are things that have happened here that will be useful to others. We'd also like it to have the oldest living managers, but that's a minor point.