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Warren Buffett

9,188 tagged segments · 1985–2026

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19852026

Most-recent segments300 of 9,188

Warren BuffettInterview2026-03-31

Warren Buffett on Squawk Box with Becky Quick (Epstein / Gates Foundation)

“Cecil. Yeah, Cecil Williams, who came to that church in 1963 and it was a dying church in a changing part of the neighborhood in San Francisco, and they weren't glad to see him the 100 or so parishioners that were left. But he turned it into something that became – it gave hope and life to people that the world had given up on. And I went on Sunday still expecting something less than that, and I watched Cecil, and I could see what he was doing, and he was for real. And so Susie, at some point, said, why don't you do something to raise some money for him? You know, and so, I think she actually selected the idea of the lunch, and then we did the lunch. The first three lunches brought $25,000 each because they were localized. And then we got the idea of going on eBay. And then we started getting bids from around the world. And it just generally kept moving up, although it wasn't every single year, but it just – it just put us on the map. And as the final amount, 19 million was raised. Now that was kind of raised because it was the last one, I think, I was doing NFL that had bought an earlier lunch, but I didn't make any calls to him or do anything. He just turned out to be – it inspires people. And Smith & Wollensky, as you know, covered it in New York sometimes.”

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Warren BuffettInterview2026-03-31

Warren Buffett on Squawk Box with Becky Quick (Epstein / Gates Foundation)

“Well, I ran out of gas. You know, I got to be what, 93 at that time, or something like that. And it just – same reason I gave up teaching. I teach – I was – I taught every year from when I was 21 till 88 or 89, and there just came a period when your body said different things to you, and you should turn it over to somebody, just like I did at Berkshire. I mean, at different times, on different things, but I – and so we thought we had a continuation of it all set up, and then for one reason or another, it fizzled. And so the last two years, well, I think the first year, some board member made up some members – but basically the auction disappeared.”

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Warren BuffettInterview2026-03-31

Warren Buffett on Squawk Box with Becky Quick (Epstein / Gates Foundation)

“No. And Cecil Williams was about my age – and it got so I couldn't understand him on the phone or anything like that, but all he wanted was this to continue. And so I don't know where the idea came from exactly, but I said I would do one more, just to get us started again and to have Steph Curry join us in the Bay Area. I mean, it's just a natural.”

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Warren BuffettInterview2026-03-31

Warren Buffett on Squawk Box with Becky Quick (Epstein / Gates Foundation)

“Yeah. And, you know, just go on to new heights. And Steph is the hero of millions and millions of people. So, I think – I really think as a reward, I think it will continue to be what Cecil hoped it to be. And it would have killed me to have it just die off. And as much what Cecil poured into it himself, he believed everybody was worthwhile. And the world had given up on these people, and he may have started giving a little bit of food to them before he got through – he was doing all these things at Glide. And he never gave up on anybody.”

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Warren BuffettInterview2026-03-31

Warren Buffett on Squawk Box with Becky Quick (Epstein / Gates Foundation)

“Yeah. I go in every day to the office. I don't accomplish hardly anything. I mean, in terms of – it just takes me way longer to do things. And Greg is so good. It was kind of embarrassing how good he is, because he has covered – you know, we've got about 200 businesses within Berkshire, you know, that came about, and I can't name the manager's names or their wives names, or – and I haven't seen them, you know, in a long time. It's easier just to write the letter once a year and kind of do my own thing. Greg covers more ground in a day than I would in a week, even when I was at my peak, let alone my present condition. So it's a move that in many ways, I could have done it earlier, and Greg would have been better than I was, but you know, and I can still contribute just a tiny bit.”

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Warren BuffettInterview2026-03-31

Warren Buffett on Squawk Box with Becky Quick (Epstein / Gates Foundation)

“He'll keep me posted. Yeah, Well, yeah. It's investment bankers calling him and – they will see him – you know, they will try to sell anything. But I cut them off in about 10 or 15 seconds, and he's – he spends more time with them, but I don't know where he gets this time, because he plays hockey with his – I mean, it isn't like he's as fanatic as I was in terms of running the place, but with no more apparent effort, he just covers so many bases.”

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Warren BuffettInterview2026-03-31

Warren Buffett on Squawk Box with Becky Quick (Epstein / Gates Foundation)

“I think we're probably the largest bidder. And ironically, I got involved in Solomon because they bid for too many bills. And I don't think they'd get mad at us now – we've been for too many but, you're not supposed to go over 35% or something in the auction. And of course, you bid through the primary dealers. But I don't even know the mechanics that well, but one fellow in our office handles all the mechanics of the stocks and bonds we buy.”

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Warren BuffettInterview2026-03-31

Warren Buffett on Squawk Box with Becky Quick (Epstein / Gates Foundation)

“Well if they're 5 or 6% cheaper, that doesn't, we aren't in it to make 5 or 6% I mean, but what a big seller either, in the end, we own businesses. Sometimes there's only owned, sometimes they're partly owned. That's what I like to own. And two thirds of our money, or more is in our businesses. And we bought Occidental Chemical on January 3, that was 9.7 billion. And as far as I'm concerned, that's got some advantages, some disadvantages, versus owning a stock, but it's got the same principles attached to it. It is a business, and it's a business we expect to own, you know, indefinitely. I mean—”

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Warren BuffettInterview2026-03-31

Warren Buffett on Squawk Box with Becky Quick (Epstein / Gates Foundation)

“Yeah, if there is a big decline, we will deploy, I mean, but we won't, we will deploy it because stocks are attractive or businesses are attractive to us, and we are not planning to sell them next week or next month, so we want to be right on them. And we've had our American Express stock 30 years without having a -- close to 40 years, 35 years. And on the other hand, there's things I change my mind on fairly quickly, but, but the goal is own the owned businesses, and when we buy Occidental Chemical, we expect all of that 50 years from now. You know, the world can change in some way, but that we do not, we do not buy that with a thought of resale.”

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Warren BuffettInterview2026-03-31

Warren Buffett on Squawk Box with Becky Quick (Epstein / Gates Foundation)

“Yeah, well, if I didn't like it, I could sell it. Yeah, I can, I think it's a remark -- it's better than any business we own outright. Now, we own a railroad that's worth more money than our Apple position, for example, they're both looked at the same way. I mean, they're both, they're both businesses. I expect the, I think it's more predictable in a certain sense, that the railroad will be around 50 or 100 years from now, but it doesn't earn the rate remotely on capital than Apple does. I mean, Apple is a business that you've got one, probably and your kids have got them, and—”

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Warren BuffettInterview2026-03-31

Warren Buffett on Squawk Box with Becky Quick (Epstein / Gates Foundation)

“I think the consumers are in love with them too much. I don't, I don't think Washington will do anything that really destroys something that every one of their voters likes and they're using themselves. I mean, it's a remarkable product that way. Just think of something as useful as the Apple is. I mean, it's, Tim Cook has done better with the hand than Steve Jobs. He couldn't have done what Steve Jobs did, but Steve Jobs handed him a hand that Steve would not have done as well. Steve picked him. I mean, when you get right down to it, and Tim was a fantastic manager, and he's a good guy, and somehow he gets along with everybody in the world, which is, you know, that's, that's a technique I wouldn't have for example. Certainly my partner, Charlie Munger, wouldn't have had it, but I'm very happy to have it be our largest open. I was not happy to have it be as large as almost everything else combined.”

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Warren BuffettInterview2026-03-31

Warren Buffett on Squawk Box with Becky Quick (Epstein / Gates Foundation)

“Well I don't because A, I wouldn't be any good at it, and besides, I'm so late to the game. I am not learning new things well. I still don't know what to do with the phone, but I just recognize the fact that that you know you're going to have one, and your kids are going to want one, and and it is a terribly useful, I mean, it's incredibly useful. And you get something that's useful and offered worldwide, and where, to some extent, you're a little worried about maybe moving your photos from one system to another. All I had to do was go out to Nebraska Furniture Mart and talk to customers is what, that's what I did 60 years ago at American Express when they were looked at like they were done for on the salad oil scandal. And I went down to the Omaha National Bank, and I said, are you getting a premium for American Express tickets? They can sell their traveler's check for more than Citigroup, Bank of America, Barclays, everybody had and they were getting a premium at the same time, everybody else was worried about them getting in, getting out of business. And the same thing, when they actually started their card, they were going up against Diners Club and Carte Blanche, who had come first. And they came they came on later. And instead of coming in at a cut price, they came in at a price above the competition. That says a lot about how consumers felt about American Express.”

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Warren BuffettInterview2026-03-31

Warren Buffett on Squawk Box with Becky Quick (Epstein / Gates Foundation)

“Well, if I were at the Fed, the thing I'd worry about always is, you know, you're the reserve currency of the world. I mean, so you've got very smart people, very sophisticated people, the American dollar looks like nothing could happen to it. I don't feel anything could happen to it. But if it does happen to it, I would, I would, I wouldn't want the responsibility of running the Fed.”

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Warren BuffettInterview2026-03-31

Warren Buffett on Squawk Box with Becky Quick (Epstein / Gates Foundation)

“I don't know what, what I do there. I mean, I think that Jay Powell in when, when the epidemic broke out, I think he acted in March of 2020 and I think if he'd waited two or three weeks, it would have been a disaster. Once the dominoes start toppling, they just start toppling and, and, and, and that line is shorter than anybody thinks, and it topples faster. And I think he did exactly the right thing, and he, he did it even stronger than Volker did. You know, I mean, he, he and Volker are my heroes at the Fed.”

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Warren BuffettInterview2026-03-31

Warren Buffett on Squawk Box with Becky Quick (Epstein / Gates Foundation)

“I mean, the banking system, in some sense is very strong, in other sense, is very fragile. I mean, JPMorgan in the last couple annual reports reported doing $10 trillion of business per day. Now, that's an unsecured policy. Now, they know what they're doing. Believe me. I mean, there's nobody smarter than JP-- but I don't want -- I didn't want -- during the 2008 period, I didn't want anything unsecured, you know, out there for a day. I mean, who knew? Nobody was any good. You know, I mean, it, the world is very interconnected and everybody panics. I mean, it, you know, they may say they don't, but you can call the biggest investment banking firms and they say, well, they don't answer the phone even if things get bad enough. And if they do answer the phone, you know, they say 10 bid, 20 offered subject.”

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Warren BuffettInterview2026-03-31

Warren Buffett on Squawk Box with Becky Quick (Epstein / Gates Foundation)

“21 percent and that was some day, and it just kept coming. And most of the specialist firms, which then counted for more in terms of the stability of the markets. They were broke. I mean, as I remember, they went around to their banks and said, just don't pull the loans, you know, but they, people, they were supposed to keep making markets, but people just kept hitting the bid and can widen the spread out. You got circuit breakers now, all kinds of things. But when people are scared, they're scared. And people, if you yell fire in a crowded theater, everybody runs. Still, it still pays to beat people to the door, you know, and I can get trampled, you know, so, I will stand back there and say everybody to stay calm, you know? But that's because I can't run fast. On the other hand, when people come back into the theater, they come in one at a time. They know they don't have to get into it. But when people panic, they panic.”

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Warren BuffettInterview2026-03-31

Warren Buffett on Squawk Box with Becky Quick (Epstein / Gates Foundation)

“I don't, I do not think I know what, but, therefore, I want to be prepared for anything, and, therefore, we will always have, we'll always have cash around and we'll have treasury bills. We won't have money market funds. We didn't have them in 2008. We won't have commercial paper in 2008. There's just one thing that's legal tender. And, you know, if you own treasury bills, and we have known, we don't own treasury bonds way out. I mean, but every Monday, the treasury has to sell bills. And as long as they got to sell, you know, X billions worth of bills, I mean, they kind of a, they can print some money to do it, and they'll do it.”

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Warren BuffettInterview2026-03-31

Warren Buffett on Squawk Box with Becky Quick (Epstein / Gates Foundation)

“I mean, the idea that people think they know what the market's going to do is just crazy. I mean, the idea that they would shout out to the world, you know, that something they really knew, I mean, that's like saying if they had gold -- found gold in their backyard, they'd come on television and say, here's where the gold is in my backyard, you know? I mean, they're selling something.”

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Warren BuffettInterview2026-03-31

Warren Buffett on Squawk Box with Becky Quick (Epstein / Gates Foundation)

“Well, they know that there's a certain, I mean, there's people in the United States and other parts of the world, but you've seen how much they like to gamble. And, basically, you have this incredible cathedral called the American Economic System. Nobody's seen anything like it. I mean, it's the cathedral of all cathedrals. But attached to it is a casino and people can walk back and forth between the two. And believe me, people like to gamble. I mean, they gamble with the odds against them in the market. They can actually gamble if they -- well, they really aren't gambling if they do it, but, I mean, if they just buy a stock and sit for 50 years, if they got a group of them, they're going to do fine. I mean, the American capitalism system works and betting against the house does not work. I mean, it's just -- it's so simple. But, people like to gamble. I mean–”

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Warren BuffettInterview2026-03-31

Warren Buffett on Squawk Box with Becky Quick (Epstein / Gates Foundation)

“We went through Las – Susie and I. We just got my Aunt Alice's car. And we drove and we went through Las Vegas at the time. And I watched all these people who were dressed well and they'd flown on jets. They'd flown, you know, for many hours, spent much money and everything else to go and pull handles, you know, or do something that was mathematically dumb. And I thought, this is the land of opportunity. I told them we were going to get rich. I mean, how can you have people who have perfectly decent IQs rushing to do dumb things, which they do, and industries build on it. Now, it's become legalized and the more they open it up, the more people like to do it. They like to do it in the stock market. And actually in the stock market, at least they got a favorable expectancy if they just sit tight.”

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Warren BuffettInterview2026-03-31

Warren Buffett on Squawk Box with Becky Quick (Epstein / Gates Foundation)

“Well, I don't think, I don't think you can stop it once you open it up, and once the states found out that they could pay about 60 cents on the dollar, or something like that, whatever they may have different systems for different states. There was one state it was legal in when I was a kid, and we've been around for hundreds of years. But then once people saw how that was working, other places took it up. And of course, rich people love it because they don't have to pay. I mean, to the extent that the states raise money from people who that what the dollar really means something to them, actually relieves the taxes on me or other rich people. I mean, it's not direct. I mean it, but it's, it's the net effect. So I don't like things that make a sucker out of people. I don't like them. I particularly don't like them when the government sponsors them. I don't think the government should play its I don't think the function of the government is to play its people for suckers.”

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Warren BuffettInterview2026-03-31

Warren Buffett on Squawk Box with Becky Quick (Epstein / Gates Foundation)

“It's a tax. It's a tax on stupidity. But it's, it's, but I'm not mad at the people that are stupid. No, I really am not. I mean, you can't help it, to some extent, if you're human beings, you're geared that way when somehow, you know, it's developed within the humans. I don't like it when the government that they elect decides they're going to profit off that sort of activity. And I particularly, I think it's kind of cynical. I don't think, I don't think you should have a cynical government. I mean it's—”

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Warren BuffettInterview2026-03-31

Warren Buffett on Squawk Box with Becky Quick (Epstein / Gates Foundation)

“I took that pretty philosophically. I mean, I could handle that. And now, you've got nine countries, including, you know, a guy in North Korea. I mean, and there will be, something will happen. And we worried enormously about it when there were two. And we had perfectly, we had really pretty sane leaders in Kennedy and Khrushchev. You know, I mean, you were not dealing with unstable people or anything like that. And. You know, the ships turned around, but people were hiding under their desks with two. I mean, just think how you feel with North Korea having it and Iran wanting to get it. I mean, it -- it is -- and I don't have an answer for that. I mean, we did the right thing in 1938 even or 1939. You can go look at it. It's all over the Internet. The most important letter ever written. And Leo Szilard could not get the message to. He was a famous nuclear physicist. Terrific one. Very funny too. And he couldn't get the message to Roosevelt, but he knew if Einstein signed the letter, that it would get there, and he finally got Einstein to sign the letter. And that letter was a month before the Germans started rolling into Poland. And I don't think Roosevelt understood U-235 any better than I do. I mean, you know, but he knew if Einstein signed it, he better do something. And the funny thing is, of course, he was doing it because he was worried about the Germans getting it. And it was actually used on the Japanese. But it, we, we haven't learned to live with it. Now, we've been -- we've gone 80 years since then. We've had a lot of close calls. I mean, we've had training tapes put in there that that almost got the president to do something. They've had them. I mean, there is no way that the planet has an expectancy of 500 years now when it was 4.5 billion when I was a kid and we had to do it. I'm not faulting anybody. My dad was in Congress. He would have voted for it. I mean, everybody rejoiced on VJ day. You know, I mean, it -- it -- but there was no way we could undo it.”

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Warren BuffettInterview2026-03-31

Warren Buffett on Squawk Box with Becky Quick (Epstein / Gates Foundation)

“It's a controversial but I would be, I would be for one way or another, if I were president of the United States. I don't want to be president United States, because I don't want that. Sorry, I, I one time asked one president. I said, you know, if, if the Soviets had launched, though they already were in the air and our policy was mutually assured destruction, would you have told Strategic Air Command, unleash ours knowing that it wasn't going to, I mean, it was going to just kill millions and millions and millions more people and add to a super polluted atmosphere that who knows what is going to happen? I mean, it, and now we have—”

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Warren BuffettInterview2026-03-31

Warren Buffett on Squawk Box with Becky Quick (Epstein / Gates Foundation)

“And says, we have incontrovertible. This is not -- this is not geese above the North Pole. This is not a training tape that got put in by mistake. We know they're in the air and you've got 10 minutes to make a decision. Mr. President, what do I tell SAC to do? Do we unleash ours? And I used to be on the SAC advisory board, but believe it or not, the, but that was for political purposes as they put people on that truly, because they were always looking for more money. And they just figured if. And I don't blame them.”

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Warren BuffettInterview2026-03-31

Warren Buffett on Squawk Box with Becky Quick (Epstein / Gates Foundation)

“I would say that one way or another. In the next 100 years, maybe it's 200 years, who knows? But one way or another, something will happen that cause it to be used. And we can't take what's out there now. And if you thought it was dangerous with the Soviets and us with Khrushchev, who was perfectly rational guy, probably Kennedy, just wait until we, wait until we're dealing with, you know, the guy in North Korea that criticizes haircut or something, I mean, or, or I would say the most dangerous thing is actually somebody that's got their hand on the switch who is dying themselves or is facing enormous embarrassment if he figures if I go ever—”

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Warren BuffettInterview2026-03-31

Warren Buffett on Squawk Box with Becky Quick (Epstein / Gates Foundation)

“Well, I won't say what I thought about them, particularly related to Bill Gates, but I would say it's astounding to me how human people are. I mean, it, here you had a guy that was a convicted guy, a sensational con man, and the percentage of people that he knocked off. I mean, whether it was, he found their weakness, it might have been sex. It might be power, it might be, whatever it might be. And I don't see how anybody could have pulled that off. And then, and of course, all these figures think that it's going when he dies that are, you know, they've, they've, they basically lied about it before. But I mean, you know, it—”

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Warren BuffettInterview2026-03-31

Warren Buffett on Squawk Box with Becky Quick (Epstein / Gates Foundation)

“Well, I mean, you know, they've rationalized it one way or another, but and now it's all getting opened up and, of course. I'm just I'm so happy the guy didn't, that he didn't stop in Omaha ever. I mean, or that I didn't live in New York. If I lived in New York, I had some party. I would have been at some thing I think. And more people always are asking to take a picture, and I usually do. I'm so used to doing it with students. I always do these gag pictures where I'm picking some guy's pocket or proposing to some woman or some thing and -- and, you know, I thank heavens, I, I never, and I never came near the guy. And I had read the article in "Vanity Fair" in 2003 that—”

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Warren BuffettInterview2026-03-31

Warren Buffett on Squawk Box with Becky Quick (Epstein / Gates Foundation)

“And they knew him. They knew he lied to him on all kinds of things. And. And Ace Greenberg was a good friend of mine. Well, Jimmy Cayne may have been actually running the firm by then. I'm not sure. But Ace Greenberg always was looking for -- he had a guy that the son of a friend of mine that he hired just to be his ferret. His -- and his job was to look for anything that was old or large that traders might have stuck in their desk or -- I mean, he was worried about, about people. But somehow. Ace's daughter, I guess, was dated by -- dating Epstein or something. And that guy must have been the con man of all time. There's—”

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Warren BuffettInterview2026-03-31

Warren Buffett on Squawk Box with Becky Quick (Epstein / Gates Foundation)

“And be prosecuted. And even though he managed to jiggle his way through that thing with, you know, whoever the attorney general was, then it one way or another, he did not really spend much time in his cell, you know, and -- but he had a way of conning everybody. I mean, he probably who knows what he offered the guys, you know, to do that, he could con anybody.”

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Warren BuffettInterview2026-03-31

Warren Buffett on Squawk Box with Becky Quick (Epstein / Gates Foundation)

“Sure. I can't read them myself because my eyesight are so bad, but I've got a friend that reads them for me, and it is astounding to me that anybody could be that successful as a con person. But you know, PT Barnum said it many years ago too, there's one born every minute. And, you know, men are going to like sex, and some, some of them are going to like not paying taxes, and whatever it was, he figured out what their weakness was, and then he was — had the ability to prey on them. But that doesn't excuse the people on the other end. I mean –”

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Warren BuffettInterview2026-03-31

Warren Buffett on Squawk Box with Becky Quick (Epstein / Gates Foundation)

“The consequences are very likely to be, in my view, same thing that happened back in 1969 when the Johnson administration left and the Ford Foundation hired a whole bunch of people that were let go from government, and it'll take – it takes something where Congress feels that they're better off going after the foundations than not. And foundations have got plenty, I mean, money, and foundations have plenty of more power in Washington. It's kind of irritating. We can talk about that later, maybe, but in '69 I think Wilbur Mills was as head of the Ways and Means Committee. I don't remember exactly how it came about, but that was the last – that was a big revision of what foundations could do –”

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Warren BuffettInterview2026-03-31

Warren Buffett on Squawk Box with Becky Quick (Epstein / Gates Foundation)

“And I was one of the three. Now, we only met once a year. I did not ask probing questions. I mean, you know, if I had – if I thought I had to ask probing questions, I wouldn't want to put the money into it in the first place. But – and incidentally, the guy, the CEO of the foundation, wasn't necessarily present during all these things, but he's not the real CEO. I mean, in the end, Bill ran the foundation. And it was – but I learned – I guess when the divorce action happened, because I resigned a month later, less than a month later, I think.”

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Warren BuffettInterview2026-03-31

Warren Buffett on Squawk Box with Becky Quick (Epstein / Gates Foundation)

“I learned that I didn't know what was going on, and – which didn't mean something terrible was going on, necessarily, but I certainly didn't know what was going on. We didn't – and I didn't ask the questions, either, though. I mean in terms of being on the foundation board, or it was – I made a decision on it in 2006 and and I didn't think butting into so many marital problems or anything like that was particularly appropriate at foundation meetings. But they went through and they talked about all these little things that didn't mean anything and and then they hired a few people that are really bad news, you know, I never met any of those people. That guy –”

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Warren BuffettInterview2026-03-31

Warren Buffett on Squawk Box with Becky Quick (Epstein / Gates Foundation)

“Well, yeah, actually, I agreed to do it every year, but I've done it around June 30 most of the time, and I'll wait and see what unfolds. The stock isn't going anyplace. It isn't like I'm giving it all the way to something else or won't have it. But I'll wait and see what I'm learning. I've learned things I didn't know about something for all these years, and I didn't know how the marital thing would play out. I mean, I just didn't know about it. You can guess sometimes that people aren't getting along at a given time, but that's true in every marriage. There are times when they get irritated with their spouse, or something like that. So in any event, I'll just wait and see. And there's three and a half million, or whatever it is pages – I mean, it is astounding.”

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Warren BuffettInterview2026-03-31

Warren Buffett on Squawk Box with Becky Quick (Epstein / Gates Foundation)

“That's why I want to learn. I don't have to make that decision today, and I haven't made it today. But I do keep reading things. I mean, I heard – somebody reads them for me, actually. I was always astounded somewhat by the Epstein thing when it was taking place. But what this reveals about humans and the degree, whether – whether it's money or whether it's sex or whatever. I mean, this guy found people's weaknesses, but they did do things. I don't think, if you ask me my personal opinion, I don't think Bill had anything to do with girls or the island or anything like that. But I am learning things about all kinds of stuff when I read this, and it is ruining one person after another. I mean, it's just astounding to me how bad – people always do things. I mean, there's consensual sex and all kinds of things, but, this guy – how many hours are there in the day? I mean, three and a half million, or whatever, his communications and all the thinking that goes into – and he found people's weaknesses, and boy, did he know how to use it. And he used, he obviously used this guy, Boris somebody. And he used the woman at Goldman Sachs, I mean, just every place you looked. I've never seen anything – and I'm sure that once you get rid of the redacting a few things, you're going to learn more.”

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Warren BuffettInterview2026-03-31

Warren Buffett on Squawk Box with Becky Quick (Epstein / Gates Foundation)

“It's astounded me that we've gotten that many. What Bill has done, on which I give him credit for, is he's taken it abroad. And you're changing the behavior of societies to some small degree. The United States is – now, they've gotten it partly by laws, the favor of two and everything else. But United States is an experiment, not only in a lot of other ways, but also actually in terms of private philanthropy and those made small little cracks in that around the world, which I think only defies centuries and centuries of behavior. So his, the energy he brings to anything he's involved in is incredible. I mean, I'm too lazy. I'm not going to go around the world. I just, you know, I feel we launched something good, and I feel that there is no one that's a member of the giving pledge that is giving less than they would have given otherwise. Now we never told them what to give it to. We never told them when they should give it. We didn't make an illegal pledge, I mean, but we really got response on that.”

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Warren BuffettInterview2026-03-31

Warren Buffett on Squawk Box with Becky Quick (Epstein / Gates Foundation)

“Well, if they don't like it, they don't have to belong to the – they can retire from it. They didn't make a legal pledge anyway. There may be any one of a lot of reasons why rich people don't like other rich people, or who knows what happens, but I would say this, that – I just would bet a lot of money that nobody is giving less because of it than they would have otherwise given. And a fair number of people, not huge numbers – but not insignificant numbers either – are giving it earlier or giving more. The biggest objection that people would raise with me, and it usually was by the mother, was that they just didn't want to become targets of articles about how rich they were, and can't blame them for that. I mean, they're worried about – they can be worried about anything. But a lot of people joined. One guy even joined, because he said, all I wanted is to have lunch with Becky Quick. I said, I think – and he didn't follow through, apparently.”

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Warren BuffettInterview2026-03-31

Warren Buffett on Squawk Box with Becky Quick (Epstein / Gates Foundation)

“But I mean that – if you get a lot of billionaires, you get a lot of peculiar people. Not that that's peculiar. I know I should present you with that, but it was amazing to me the reception we got. And we just started dialing and we hit the obvious. I mean, obviously it's fallen off – the rate of additions. And obviously, you know, we made – we genuinely said we're not judging the people. We're not to go to the judge whether if they made their money liquor, we weren't, you know, what counts is what they're doing with it. You know? I mean, that's all we're talking about, is for God's sakes, you know, give away half of it. And that's so different from up for a family that's got a family farm for 100 years, and they planned on giving it to their kids and all kinds of things, than it is for some guy like me that just made it in stocks, you know. I mean, it would be a big, emotional decision if I were like a bunch of – got certain very rich farmers, you know, that own lots of acreage, and they've been building it their whole life for their – to turn over to their kids, then they buy the farm next to them and everything. So I think I feel good about the giving pledge.”

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Warren BuffettInterview2026-03-31

Warren Buffett on Squawk Box with Becky Quick (Epstein / Gates Foundation)

“We've had great times together, but he's treated me better than I think he's probably treated anybody else. I mean, he's arranged trips that arrange for the kinds of foods I like, to the Wall Street Journal being in China, or what I mean, he's been terribly thoughtful with me throughout this but I think until it gets cleared up, I don't, I just don't think it makes sense to do a lot of talking. For one thing, I don't want to be under, my memory is no good anymore. I don't want to be under oath in terms of trying to remember everything over 30 years or 20 years of foundations done, or anything like that. I didn't have anything to do with it, except I put, put the money in. But as you may say, you can, you can say, well, you're a derelict and not in not doing it. But I'm giving money to one of my children's foundations. I've never looked at what they give, either. You know, I mean, I just, I trust people. And I think I've trusted very good people, but I think I can see where if somebody just a guy like Epstein involved in their life, they don't want to talk about it, you know, I wouldn't. I mean, it's been very useful to me that Bill ever said, come on along. I want you to meet Epstein so he he could have, he could have done things that that would have been screwed up my life. I'd have gone along with him if he'd said to me after the annual meeting or sometime and he said, you know, I'm going to New York. Why don't you fly along? There's this interesting guy or something. I probably would have gone, you know. And so, I got him to thank for not doing that. But you can't get away from what happened either. And you can't get away from the fact that foundations are a peculiar there's something that our country has really endorsed, I mean charitable deductions, and donor advised funds and all of that sort of thing. And that's worth looking at, probably more often than every 30 or 40 years. Foundation is just what they do is they lobby just basically leave us alone.”

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Warren BuffettInterview2026-03-31

Warren Buffett on Squawk Box with Becky Quick (Epstein / Gates Foundation)

“Well, I think the interesting thing is, you've got America, which is the wonder of the world, and at the same time, you've got a great number of people that they're just as much human beings as you or I. And you know, they may not, they may not have the same IQ or anything like that, but I think the differentials are too great, but I also think it's worked. So how do you actually solve all that through an entity which is basically broken down into two sides that sort of automatically vote against each other no matter what the issue is. I mean.”

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Warren BuffettInterview2026-03-05

Squawk Pod: Berkshire's New CEO Greg Abel — 03/05/26

“>> I I don't think you'll see crypto>> I I don't think you'll see crypto>> I I don't think you'll see crypto >> ever any>> ever any>> ever any >> you know ever is a long time you never>> you know ever is a long time you never>> you know ever is a long time you never say never but I just don't see it. Whatsay never but I just don't see it. Whatsay never but I just don't see it. What I do see is that when it comes toI do see is that when it comes toI do see is that when it comes to technology again from a even from antechnology again from a even from antechnology again from a even from an operational perspective where we'reoperational perspective where we'reoperational perspective where we're seeing how we use it uh the impact it'sseeing how we use it uh the impact it'sseeing how we use it uh the impact it's having it does allow us to develophaving it does allow us to develophaving it does allow us to develop strong views and a better knowledge basestrong views and a better knowledge base”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

2025 Annual Meeting Highlight Reel

“Tomorrow we're having a board meeting of Berkshire, and we have 11 directors, two of the directors, who are my children, Howie and Susie know of what I'm going to talk about there. The rest of them this will come as news, too. But I think it's the time has arrived where Greg should become the chief executive officer of the company at year end. And I want to spring that on the directors effectively and give that, it's my recommendation. Let them have the time to think about what questions or what structures or anything that we want. And then there's a meeting following that. That few months will take action. The view of the 11 directors, I think they'll be unanimously in favor of it. And that would mean that at year end, it would be the chief executive or officer of, I would still, well, then could conceive it would be useful in a few cases. But the final word would be. what Greg said in operations, in capital deployment, whatever it might be. I could be helpful, I believe, in that in certain respects, if we ran into periods of great opportunity or anything. I think that sure has a special reputation that when there's times of trouble for the government, that we are an asset on not a liability, which is a position that's very hard to have because usually the public and government get very negative on business if there's a time like that. But so I think I could, there might be a time without, I'd be helpful, but Greg would have the tickets and, and he would make, like I said, whether it's acquisitions, board would be more welcome him more authority on large acquisitions, probably if they knew I was around, uh, chief executive period. And, uh, like I say, the plan is to, uh, there's no anything about this until what he's hearing right now, but that the, uh, be able to ask me questions tomorrow as then a little more of the specifics of what they should be thinking and all of that. zero of selling one share of Berkshire a half the way, it'll get given away, it'll get given away, gradually, it just won't, I would, okay, drink or Coke and calm down. I would say that I would add this. The decision to keep every share is an economic decision because I think the prospects of Berkshire will be better under a great advantage of them than mine that's the news hook for the day follow that and thanks for coming the end the enthusiasm shown by that I'll take a surprise thank you okay if everyone will please please take their seats”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Afternoon Session - 2025 Meeting

“Okay, we're ready to go, and I'm going to lead off by actually recommending a movie. I know that's why you came. I would recommend to all of you that you go to Amazon Prime. I've got no financial interest in this, but you go to Amazon Prime and click on a a documentary called Becoming Catherine Graham. It's an incredible story from 50 or so years ago. And to some extent, I had the good luck to be kind of a viewer of some American history that I think is fascinating. So if you feel that that I... I misled you, you can write me a note, and I promise to report how many readers didn't agree with it, but I got to becoming Catherine Graham, and you'll see a story of a remarkable story of American history, and there are a good many portions in there that I, who lived through that period, didn't know about at the time. And I think, I don't think really every American citizen ought to watch it. So with that, but I hope you all spend some more money out there in our friendly shops, and we will go to Station 9.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Morning Session - 2025 Meeting

“Okay, if everyone will please take their seats. This is my 60th annual meeting, and it's the biggest, and I think it'll be the best yet. And I would, before I start, I'd like to give you a few figures from yesterday, because we set all kinds of records. Yesterday, we had 19,700 people that joined us in the afternoon between noon and 5 o'clock, and that was up from 16,200, which was a previous record the year before. And in every aspect, we set records. C's Candy did $317,000 against 283,000 the year before. And most of these were limited by capacity. I mean, there were lines there throughout the total day. Brooks did $310,000. It was an all-time record sales day for them. And I think they have close to 3,000 runners lined up for Sunday. Which is a lot of people to get up. I think we've had 2,200, and 2,400 before, but 3,000. And that doesn't count me, and it won't count me. And I could go up and down the line. Jazz Wars, around 250,000, double the previous years. They just sell as fast as they can sell. Most of most, every place had. And had people lined up at the cash register sometimes for a lot longer away than wish we had. But we'll learn the game eventually. And it goes on and on. Every company said records. And there's no way of knowing how many people we have here. Today, we have people listening in around the world. But I think we're setting, we'll probably set records in a great variety of ways. And I would, we're going to have, in a minute, we'll get to the question and answer, but I'd like to first introduce our directors. And I'm Warren Buffett, and I was born in bread right here in Omaha. We have Greg Abel. He was born and bred in Canada. And we have a Jeet Jane who was born and bred in India. So we have a very diverse group and in the audience and I will introduce them alphabetically and if they'll stand as I introduce them. And I know it'll be an effort but withhold your applause till the end so that so that we can get through the list, but we'll start alphabetically with Howard Buffett. How I would you stand and withhold the applause. It'll go to his head. Susan Buffett, we have Steve Burke, Ken Schenall, Chris Davis, Sue Decker, this is our lead director, Charlotte Diamond, Tom Murphy, Tom Murphy Jr., Ron also. and I'll have a few, when we finish, I'll have a few more things to add about him. Wally White's and Merrill Whitmer. And with that, you've got our all-star cast.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

2025 Annual Meeting Highlight Reel

“This is my, this is my 60th annual meeting and it's the biggest and I think it'll be the best yet. Trade should not be a weapon. And the United States, the United States, we've won. I mean, we have become an incredibly important country starting from nothing. Two hundred fifty years ago, there's nothing been anything like it. And it's a big big mistake in my view when you have seven and a half billion people don't like you very well and you've got 300 million that are crowing in some way about how well they've done and I don't think it's right and I don't think it's wise. I do think that the more the more prosperous the rest of the world becomes, it won't be in our expense, the more prosperous will become and will then the safer will feel. and your children will feel someday.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Morning Session - 2025 Meeting

“And Ron, if you don't mind standing, I would like to point out that Ron, they finally got through an age director thing at Berkshire. I think we had five that were over 90 here not so long ago, but we put in the highest just, or Sue tells me anyway, that it's the highest age limit that any of the company she checked out came up with, but Ron has been on the board for 28 years and been associated with Charlie Munger at Munger tolls for many years beyond that and has been around a variety of times of crisis and joy and disappointments and surprises and everything else at Berkshire and there's been a bit invaluable help to us. So I think I'd like to give a special hand to Ronaldson. And I think I'll do something else that isn't done usually at annual meetings, but I haven't had a chance. I listened to him on Thursday afternoon. It's the only It's the only investment quarterly call that I listen to, but I listen to Tim Cook, and I understand, and it'll be tough for me to see him from up here, but Tim Cook, there he is. I'm somewhat embarrassed to say that Tim Cook has made the Berkshire a lot more money than I've ever made Berkshire Adway, so I hate credit should be given to him for, for him for, I knew Steve Jobs. briefly. And Steve, of course, did things that nobody else could have done in developing Apple, but Steve picked out Tim to succeed, and he really made the right decision. Steve died as young, as you know. And nobody but Steve could have created Apple, but nobody couldn't, but Tim could have developed it like it has. So on behalf of all of Berkshire, thank you. There's a couple other people I'd like to thank. I don't do any work in terms of the show or anything else around Berkshire, but what you see today is the product of a lot of people at Berkshire. They forget, you know, they don't think of themselves as the one who's supposed to screw a light in and leave for somebody else and specialists to come along and do other things. the people of Berkshire put on this show every year. And, you know, our chief financial officer, and just everybody pitches in. It's a remarkable organization that way. But it's led this year in the last few years by Melissa Shapiro, and she's made this whole thing work. And then we got an idea. a while back, well, many years ago. Well, I'll take it all the way back. The 65 years ago, I met Carrie Solva's grandfather and his wife, well, they had nine children,”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

2025 Annual Meeting Highlight Reel

“Well, I wouldn't do anything nearly so noble as to withhold investing myself just so that Greg could look good later on. If he gets any edge of what I believe, I'll resent it. So the, you know, the amount of cash we have is, we would spend, well, when we came pretty close to spending $10 billion, not that long ago, for example, we'd spend $100 billion, I mean, and those decisions are not tough to make.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Morning Session - 2025 Meeting

“and Susie and I joined a group, and I don't look like the kind of guy that would join a playhouse group, but it turned out to be a great move in many ways. First of all, I enjoyed the plays. But beyond that, I met not only my father and an insurance company in Omaha, Bill Kaiser. But I also met Lumpkin Boys in France, so in one sort of accident when I was in my 20s, I came up with all kinds of good things. And in connection with Carrie, her father ran a company called Central States. And later on, we bought that company. And then her father ran the company. Her sister wanted to work for Berkshire some years ago. And then she decided to have a family and subsequently had four kids. So she left. But Carrie moved right in. And Carrie, And Carrie had amazing talents behind, just like a good many people do. They have talents you don't realize still. You give them some responsibility. And so 11 years ago, I asked Carrie to do a 50th anniversary book. Just use her imagination. And she never, she didn't need a check with me or do anything. She just, she never added her to the book. never published a book. She'd never dealt with the printers before. But she just went out and promptly put together this 50th anniversary book. And then this year, well, then Kerry, of course, got married and had three kids, so she had to leave us. But when we have a, we go to a baseball game once a year, and we invite some of our distinguished alumni like Kerry to join us. And And Carrie, even though she was raising three children, you may have met one or two of them in the last day or so, she volunteered to bring together a 60th anniversary book, which I asked for. And again, she took the whole thing, she just did it. She kept doing the things with her kids. And every now and then she'd... I'd ask her how it was going, and she told me how it was going. And so she put together the 60th anniversary book and got it done by, you know, maybe a week before the meeting because I gave her the assignment very late. And yesterday we sold, I think it was 4,000 plus 4,500 maybe, 4,400 maybe, 4, 4,400. We printed 8,400. We intended to print 5,000, but, so we sold 4,400 yesterday and we'll have 30, I guess, roughly 3,600 left out there today, and it's kind of a whimsical, but accurate, and she came out with just the book I hope she would come out with. And then as we went through. She was a publishing experience.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Afternoon Session - 2025 Meeting

“time looking at balance sheets than I do income statements. And Wall Street really doesn't pay much attention to balance sheets, but I like to look at balance sheets over an eight or 10-year period before I even look at the income account, because there are certain things that's harder to hide or play games with on the balance sheet than you can with the income statement. And, I mean, neither one gives you the total answer on anything, but you still ought to understand what the figures are saying and what they don't say and what they don't say and what they can't say. and what the management would like them to say that the auditors wouldn't like them to say. And I mean, there's just a lot to be learned. And you do learn more, you learn more from balance sheets, in my view, than most people give them credit for. In terms of really, I'm not worried about being remembered about that. People don't remember, well, they don't remember enough about Catherine Graham, for example, in terms of this story that shaped America in many ways. Certainly, they had just all kinds of impact. And I think, I mean, history is so fascinating. And Charlie was probably the best person you could imagine in what he learned. Charlie was never satisfied with superficial things about any subject. He really wanted to understand it. And he always would tell me that, you know, don't take a position on anything until you can describe the arguments against it better than the person who is arguing with you, that you should be able to argue their case better than they can. He was a remarkable teacher. And, uh, he was, he was a remarkable teacher. And, uh, But so were those other fellows I mentioned. I've had a, and of course, my dad was an incredible teacher. So you make the most of the people you meet that are going to make you a better person and probably forget about the rest to quite an extent. Okay, let's move on to number, well, Becky, here next.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

2025 Annual Meeting Highlight Reel

“When something is offered that is that makes sense to us and that we understand and offers good value and where we don't worry about losing. And the one problem with the investment business is that things don't come along in an orderly fashion, and they never will. And every now and then you find something and occasionally, very occasionally, but it'll happen again, that I don't know when. It won't, it could be next week, it could be five years off, but it won't be 50 years off.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

2025 Annual Meeting Highlight Reel

“Well, I'll have to ask Greg about that because I don't know anything about it. So maybe he bought it what I was looking at the other one. way, but. I think I got to call a friend on this one. Yeah, I, I, I, we own a lot of companies, but I do like to think I know most of them, but the, but the, it may be a subsidiary of a subsidiary of a subsidiary in some way, but, but, but I really don't know a thing about it. I'm sorry to.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05conf:medium

2025 Annual Meeting Highlight Reel

“That's just a sample. operate around. Today, the U.S. appears to be undergoing significant and potentially revolutionary changes. Some investors are now questioning the concept of American exceptionalism. In your view, are investors being overly pessimistic about the U.S. economy?”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Morning Session - 2025 Meeting

“Perry wouldn't take a dime. I'd get her to name her. Her charity, Stevens Center, which takes care of homeless people, and does a great many other things. It's located about five or six miles from where we are here south. It's been doing a wonderful job. Her grandfather helped form it. Her husband has now joined the board. And we are selling 20 copies of, this is a commercial place, isn't it? We are selling 20 copies that we sold 10 prior to the meeting. That's all we let them sell. And we raised a few hundred thousand dollars doing that. I think we sold one for $100,000. But we limited that to 10. And the only difference in them, these, and the $25 version is that Carrie and I signed them. But we saved six for yesterday, and they brought $148,000, which is a pretty good average per book of about $20,000. And then I had them save four more. So this afternoon when we disbanded at 1 o'clock. You're right behind us that has all the goods in at the bookstore. They will sell the final four. And when we get all through, I'll match whatever we've raised for the 20 and we'll give the Stevens Center a boost, both in financially but also in awareness. So anyway, and when you look at that book, Kerry really did the whole thing. I mean, there's a lot of information in there, and she dug through it, and she came through a couple of times maybe to check a fact or two. But she got material from the Munger family. She just did a wonderful job, and I couldn't get her to take a penny for it. So I'm going to ask her to do a lot of other things in the future. Okay. Okay. With that, I think we've covered all the business, so we will move to Becky's questions that she's received from, I don't know how many she's received, but from all over the country and perhaps outside the country. And she's picked out a group of them, which she is not shared with me. And we will hold her. eight questions between Becky and the audience, which we have by zones. And with that, I will turn things over, Becky, for the first question.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

2025 Annual Meeting Highlight Reel

“So I would not get discouraged about the fact that that it doesn't look like if we solved a very problem that's come along. We wouldn't want to be owning anything that we thought was in a currency that was really going to hell. And that's the big thing we worry about with the United States currency. I mean, it's the tendency of a government to want to be able to debate. it's currency over time is there's no system that beats that you can pick dictators you can pick representatives you can do anything but the people there will be a a push toward weaker currencies and of course that is I mentioned very briefly in the annual report that the fiscal policy is what scares me in the United States because it's it's made the way it is and it is made the way it is and And all the motivations are doing a lot of things that cause can cause trouble with money. And we've had a lot of fun here in the last, either the first 100 days or the last 100 days, whatever you want to call it, the watching what happens when people try to make sure that they aren't running fiscal risks.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

2025 Annual Meeting Highlight Reel

“since we acquired Berkshire, that Berkshire has gone down 50% in a fairly short period of the time, three different times. But the day I was born, the Dow Jones was at 240. And my first, that was August 30th, 1930. And between that and the law, it went from 240 to 41. I mean, that's... So, if people think that it made a really major change, it didn't, if it had gone up, 15% instead of down 15% people think they take that with remarkable grace. But if it makes a difference to you whether your stocks are down 15% or not, you need to get a somewhat different investment philosophy because the world is not going to adapt to you. I don't mean to sound particularly critical. I mean, I know people have emotions, but you've got to check them at the door when you. or when you invest.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Morning Session - 2025 Meeting

“Yeah, well, the import certificates were distinct, but their goal is to balance imports against exports. and so that the trade deficit would not grow in an enormous way. In fact, it would have, and it had various other provisions in it to help countries at that time, as they were called, to perhaps catch up a little bit. And they had a variety of aspects to them, but basically they were designed to balance trade. And I think you can make some very good arguments for the fact. that balanced trade is good for the world and the more balanced trade there is the better. It will continue to be better for cocoa to be raged in Ghana and coffee and Colombia and a few things. And over time, the American industry has gone from being an agricultural country. This was nothing but an ag country. I mean, virtually, And that was only 250 years ago. And we have become a very industrial country, and we did not want to make that a situation, in my view, where we ran greater and greater deficits, building up greater and greater debts against the country. So I designed this import certificate thing, which Charlie thought was a little rub, too much like a rub gold. I don't know whether that name is, but it's gimmicky, but it's certainly a lot better than anything, I think, than we're talking about now. And there's no question that trade can be an act of war. And I think it's led to bad things, just the attitudes that's brought out in the United States. I mean, we should be looking to trade with the rest of the world. world and we should do what we do best and they should do what they do best. And I don't think it—that's what we did originally. I mean, we were good at producing tobacco and cotton 250 years ago, and we traded it. And we want a prosperous world with eight countries with nuclear weapons, including a few a few that are what I would call quite unstable. I do not think it's a great idea to try and design a world where a few countries say, ha, ha, ha, ha, we've won, and other countries are envious. So my import certificate idea, which went no place, I think we've got extra copies, Rob, with not a great demand for the copies. And if you'd like, and write the office, I think we could, we could probably send you a copy of it. But the main thing to do is not use, trade should not be a weapon. And the United States, the United States, we've won, I mean, we have become an incredibly important country, starting from nothing.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

2025 Annual Meeting Highlight Reel

“It's working way better with Greg than with me because I just, I didn't want to work as hard as he works and I could get away with it because we've got to basically go to the business, very good business. And I wasn't in danger of you fire. me by virtue of ownership and the fact that we would do pretty well. But the fact that you can do pretty well doesn't mean you couldn't do better, and Greg can do better at many things. Many people want to be managed, need help in being managed. Some don't. Some you just leave alone. And if you get enough companies, you're going to get a lot of different forms of behavior. And Greg does something about it. And I've generally been alone.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Morning Session - 2025 Meeting

“Two hundred fifty years ago, there's nothing than anything like it. And it's a big mistake, in my view, when you have seven and a half billion people that don't like you very well, and you have 300 million that are crowing in some way about how well they've done. And I don't think it's right, and I don't think it's wise. I do think that the more, the more prosperous the rest of the world becomes, it won't be in our expense, the more will become and will then the safer will feel and your children will feel someday. So that's, but don't, don't expect my import certificate idea to go down there with Adam Smith's wealth of nations or anything. Okay, let's go to Area 1.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Afternoon Session - 2025 Meeting

“Yeah, and I don't want to go on too long on this, but, but sorry, I covered. No, no, but this is important because the, you know, it's very obvious that the country, for example, needs. uh, incredible improvement, rethinking, redirection even, to some extent, uh, in the grid. I mean, we, we've outgrown would be the model that America should have. And in a sense, it's a problem, something akin to the interstate highway system where you needed the power of the government really to get things done. because it doesn't work so well when you get 48 or 50 jurisdictions that each has their own way of thinking about things. And, of course, in World War II, we called in people the hour and hour, and we knew we had to turn out ships like crazy, and we knew that we had to convert Ford Motor from being a car manufacturer into an aircraft manufacturer in a matter of days, not weeks, not months. So you need that there are certain really major investment situations where we have capital like nobody else has in the private system. We have particular know-how in the whole generation and transmission arena. The country is going to need it. But we have to figure out a way, make sense from the standpoint of the government, it stands from the standpoint of the public and from the standpoint of Berkshire. And we haven't figured that out yet. I don't know whether Greg wants to even explain a few of the major problems. But that is a clear and present use of hundreds of billions of dollars. And, you know, you have people that set up funds and say, you know, they're getting paid for just a sense. something. It's it's not the way to handle it. The way to handle it is to have some kind of a government, private industry cooperation, similar to what you do in a war. And I don't think when they were doing the highway system, I don't think that the government set up his own guys that were going to pour a whole cement or anything like that. But they, you needed a cooperation. And, and we're at that. point, I think, in, in terms of energy, but I don't think, I don't think we've made any progress particularly, though.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

2025 Annual Meeting Highlight Reel

“It's a lot tougher to be an operator. I mean, it is, it's easier to sit in a room like I do. and play around with money. It's just an easier life. That doesn't mean it's a more admirable life. It doesn't, but it's been actually been a pleasant life for me, so I don't complain at least. And I've been able to choose my friends, which has made an enormous difference in my life. I've never had to work for anybody that I've been able to choose my friends, for anybody that I really didn't admire. I mean, that's a luxury in life. I am the master. I mean, I've found myself in this position where I can run the kind of company I want to run. And that's an extraordinary luxury.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Morning Session - 2025 Meeting

“Well, I'm going to extend the same goodwill to Japan that you've just extended to me. I love the people of Japan determine their best course of action in terms of economics. It's an incredible story. And it's been about six years now, as you pointed out. I was just going through a little handbook. Three thousand Japanese companies in it. One problem I have is that I can't read that handbook anymore. The prints too small, but the, and here were these five trading companies. They have a special name for them in Japan, but they were selling it particularly. at ridiculously low prices. And so I spent about the year acquiring them, and then we got to know the people better and everything that Greg and I saw we liked better as we went along. So we got fairly close to the 10% limit that we'd told the company we would never exceed without their permission. And so we did ask them reasonably whether that limit could be relaxed. and it's in the process of being relaxed somewhat.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Morning Session - 2025 Meeting

“We, I would, I would say that I'll speak for Greg beyond me, that I'll speak for Greg beyond me, that I'll, in the next 50 years, and I'll be running things then, we won't give a thought to selling those. I mean, they had, uh, and Japan's record been extraordinary, actually, in terms of, would tell you, Tim Cook would tell you that, iPhone sales there are about as great as any country outside of the United States. American Express would tell you that they sell a product very, very well in Japan, Coca-Cola that we do business. But then another big investment of ours, they do extraordinarily well in Japan. They have a number of habits in a civilization that operates differently than ours. And it's by far the biggest, they, this is the container they've always preferred. They're soft drinks and they have a whole different sort of distribution system there. But we have been treated extremely well by the five companies. They talk with Greg primarily. I went over there a year or two ago. Paul is than I am, so he's a, which isn't saying much, actually, but, uh. Very little. But he is, I don't know, how many times you think you've met with representatives of one company or the other?”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Morning Session - 2025 Meeting

“We will find things occasionally. that for any individual company there, they may, in some way, be assisted by some, some help we bring to the situation. That will be an expanding relationship. It's too bad that Berkshire has gotten as big as it is because we love that position, and I'd like it to be a lot larger than it is. But even with the five companies being, they're very large companies, and they're large companies. in Japan. And we've got at market that, you know, in the range of $20 billion invested, but I'd rather have $100 billion than $20 billion. And that's the way I feel about it. Several other investments we have. But size is an enemy, a performance, good way. But Charlie always told me that having a few problems was good for me. I never quite understood that, but he, if you listen to immoralize, you would understand. And it's not an impossible problem at all. And the Japan, the Japan investment has just been right up our alley. Do you want to add anything on that term?”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Morning Session - 2025 Meeting

“Yeah, I would say they want to, they would like to present us with opportunities. We would like to receive them. We've got the money. We both get along very well with each other. And they have different, they have some different customs than we have. They drink the number one Coca-Cola product. They drink over there something called Georgia coffee. So, I haven't converted them to Cherry Coke, and they're not going to convert me to Washington, Georgia Coffee. But it's a perfect relationship. I just wish we could get more like it. And I never dreamt of that when I picked up that little, it wasn't so little, it was about that thick but sometimes two companies to a page and a couple thousand pages, I believe, but it's amazing what you can find when you just turn the page. We showed a movie last year that about turn every page. And I would say that turning every page is one important ingredient to bring to the investment field. And I would say that turning every page is one important ingredient to bring to the investment field. And few people do turn every page and the ones that turn every page aren't going to tell you what they're finding. So you got to do a little of it yourself. Okay.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Morning Session - 2025 Meeting

“Yeah. Well, I wouldn't do anything nearly so noble as to withhold investing myself just so that Greg could look good later on. Now, if he gets any edge of what I believe, I'll resent it. So the, no, the amount of cash we have is, we would spend, well, when, we came pretty close to spending $10 billion, not that long ago, for example, we'd spend $100 billion. I mean, and those decisions are not tough to make. uh when when something is offered that is that makes sense to us and that we understand and offers good value and where we don't worry about losing and the one problem with the investment business is that things don't come along in an orderly fashion and they never will. I mean, it isn't like every day, uh, you know, the, the long term record is sensational. But that is not a product. And I've been in, see, I've had 200 trading days, 80 years. I'm, you know, I've been 16 million trading days. I'd be kind of, I mean, 16,000 training days. It would be nice if every day you've got four opportunities or something like that. And, you know, you could, and they were expected to be equally attractive. You know, if I was running a numbers racket, you know, every day would have the same expectancy of that I would keep 40% of whatever the handle was. And so the only question would be is how much we transacted. But we're not running that kind of a business. And so we're running a business which is very, very, very opportunistic. And Charlie always thought I did too many things. He thought if we did about five things in our lifetime, we could,”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Morning Session - 2025 Meeting

“we'd end up doing better than if we did 50 and, and that we never concentrated enough. So that we would rather have, if we've got $335 billion now in treasies, we would rather have conditions that have developed where we would have like 50 billion or something like that. But that just isn't the way the business works. And we have made a lot of money by not wanting to be fully invested at all times. And we don't think it's improper, actually, for people who are passive investors, just to make a few simple investments and sit for their life, sit for their life. But we've made the decision to be in the business. So we think we can do a little better than that by behaving in a very irregular manner. But if you told me that I had to invest but roughly $40 billion a year coming in, and we start with $335, if you told me I had to invest $50 billion every year until we got down to $50 billion, that would be the dumbest thing in the world to invest in that manner. Things get extraordinarily attractive very occasionally. The long-term trend is up. Nobody knows. And I certainly don't know. Greg doesn't know. Ajeet doesn't know. Nobody knows what the market is going to do tomorrow, next week, next month. And nobody knows what business is going to do tomorrow next week or next month, but they spend all their time talking about it because it's easy to talk about. And, but it has no value. I've never found anybody I wanted to listen to on the subject. And the, on the other hand, I've found the leafing through things like that big Japanese book that I can't read anymore. The, that's a treasure hunt. And every now and then you find some And occasionally, very occasionally, but it'll happen again that I don't know when. It won't, it could be next week, it could be five years off, but it won't be 50 years off. You will have, we will be bombarded with offerings that we'll be glad we have the cash for. And it'd be a lot more fun of what would happen tomorrow, but it's very unlikely to happen tomorrow. Now, very, very unlikely to happen tomorrow. But it's not unlikely to happen in five years, and then it gets, the probability to get higher if you go along. It's kind of like death. I mean, if you're 10 years old, the chances that you're going to die the next day or low, it get to be 115 or something like that, it's almost a cinch. Particularly if you're a male. I mean, all the records are held by females in terms of age.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05conf:medium

Afternoon Session - 2025 Meeting

“know the solution for. You can present the arguments, but it's a political decision when you are dealing with states or the federal government. And if you're in something where you're going to lose, the big thing to do is quit. And you present your case as well as you can and everything else, but if you don't hold the pen in the end, you don't have any business taking your money. and doing dumb things with us and we can do our best to explain what the intelligent things are. But it's your money. And so it's very hard to tell how to handle the questions of politically determined decisions of politically determined decisions that are going to go to court in many cases, but you know that it's just doesn't make sense. We know what we think a sensible system would be, but, and we ought to explain what we think it isn't. And, you know, do the best to get our position because it's pro-social to have the right solution to have it. But the right solution, for example, in the interstate, wasn't to let 48 states each decide on their own. way of doing it and award contractors, the jobs based, you know, there's just, there's some problems that can't, that can't be solved and we are not in the business of trying to solve insolvable problems. Yeah. I'd even go for example. But then the problem you have, of course, is that the people that work for you. That's their job, so they would, they, they, they, they want to have reasons to keep going. And that's a, that's a, that's, those are tough choices if you're managing, but that's what's, that's why they have managers. And one I was just going to add, because you touched on something really important there, that effectively, for example, with the utilities and the wildfires, we can't just become the insurer of last resort and that we're going to cover any costs and all costs, irrespective of what occurred. And that's a little bit of the situation we're in right now with our largest, challenge a 2020 wildfire where there were one of four, there were four fires occurring at a challenging time. One, we've always asserted was a lightning strike that was not inside our service territory. The fire burnt into our service territory, and we became responsible for that fire effectively through the courts. And we've continued to hold firm that we're not responsible for that. Rightfully, I mean, we didn't contribute to it, and we didn't initiate it, nor did we feel we ever contributed to it.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Morning Session - 2025 Meeting

“Yeah. Well, in respect to real estate, it's so much harder than stocks in terms of negotiation of deals, time spent, the involvement of multiple parties in the ownership. Usually when real estate gets in trouble so you find out you're dealing with more than equity holder. There have been times when large amounts of real estate have changed hands at bargain prices, but usually stocks were cheaper, but there were a lot easier to do. So more, real estate, it's totally enjoyed real estate transactions, and he actually did a fair number of them in the last five years of his life. You know, he was playing a game then. And it was an interesting game to him. But I think if he, you'd asked him to make a choice when he was 21, and he had to either be in stocks exclusively the rest of his life or real estate the rest of his life, he would have chosen stocks in a second. And there's just so much more opportunity, at least in the United States, there's so much more opportunity that presents itself in market than does in real estate and in real estate. state, you're dealing with a, usually dealing with a single owner or a family that owns maybe a large property, they've had a long time, maybe they've borrowed too much of money against it, maybe the population trends are against them, but to them it's an enormous decision. When you walk down to the New York Stock Exchange, you can do billions of dollars worth of business totally anonymous, and you can do it in five minutes, and the trades are complete when they're complete. In real estate, when you make a deal, a big deal with a distressed lender, you know, when”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Morning Session - 2025 Meeting

“you sign the deal, then you go into another phase. I mean, then people start negotiating more things and more things, and it's a whole different game and a different type of person to some extent enjoys the game. We, real estate deals that came our way in 2008 and 9, but we real estate deals that came our way in 2008 and But the amount of time that they would take us compared to doing something intelligent and probably better. And securities, there was just no comparison. I mean, in a real estate deal, every sentence is as important as a person and in stocks. If somebody needs to sell 20,000 shares of Berkshire or something and they call us, and the price is right, it's done in five. seconds and and it closes all the time that people who you certainly wouldn't want to have marry your daughter or that they behave well actually in in stocks partly that's because that they're probably having their their wires or phones or whatever it is recorded as to what they've said and everything but but the the the completion rate for working on anything in stocks is, if assuming you've got a meeting in the minds on prices, essentially 100% in real estate. It just begins when you agree on deals and that they take forever. So for a guy 94, it's not the most interesting thing to get involved in something where the negotiations could take years. We capability, there had been some huge failures in, in fact, if you go all the way back to Zekendorf in the 1960s, he was going to change the world and Century City out in California's a product of his. And if you go to Uris, if you go to, he was sitting on top of the world with the Uris buildings. trouble in that business. The banks usually don't want to recognize it, but that takes a long time to go through the bank processes. They just got through redoing the musk alone that he made it when he was buying it three years ago, the company that's now X. And, you know, three years to work out a transaction that, or you've got parties on both sides. that aren't ready to act, that we find it much better when people are just ready to pick up the phone and you can do hundreds of millions of dollars worth of business in the day. I've been spoiled, but I like being spoiled, so we'll keep it that way.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Afternoon Session - 2025 Meeting

“And I will say this is my great, grant an hour to everybody of the 40,000 here. Well, I'll have an interesting time the rest of my life. But I will, I'll give you one tip. I found that when I was very young, and I would drive around the various companies all over the country, and because I was very young, and these were companies were off being, and they didn't have investor relations departments there. Almost every CEO would see me, because they figured I'd never, they'd never see me again. And they didn't, they weren't getting calls like that. And I would ask them two questions. I would, I would explain to them. It's not a bad idea, incidentally.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Morning Session - 2025 Meeting

“I would just add I wouldn't trade, I wouldn't trade everything that's developed in AI in the next 10 years for a G. So if you gave me a choice, that gave me a choice of having $100 billion to participate in an insurance, property casualty insurance business for the next 10 years. and a choice of getting the top AI product out of whoever's developing it or having a gene making the decision. I would take a gene any name. I'm not kidding about that.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Afternoon Session - 2025 Meeting

“If you're going to walk into somebody's office and you say you want 10 minutes of their time, take a hourglass and stick it on the desk of the person you're talking to and turn it up. So it's going to go for 10 minutes and you say, you're going to leave in 10 minutes unless I ask. you to say. And that sets the terms. But then once you have that, if they're in the coal business, we'll say, which happened to be one that I was interested in 70 years ago or so. You just ask them one question that if they were to be stuck on a desert island and they had only one of their competitors stock during the 10 years they were going to be on that island, which one would it be and why and then after they give you that answer you said the same thing and if you were going to short your net worth while you were on that out of which would it be and why because every manager likes to talk about their competitors they're they're like a bunch of school kids you know when they get into talking about their competitors and i probably learn more about various industries by just making sure that they didn't think i'd stay too long And in the meantime, they would have the floor and talk about their competitors. I kept my own mouth shut in those days. That's a lesson I've lost somewhere along the line, but the, you're not, you're not, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're essentially, they've outsourced, or I shouldn't say outsourced, but they've, they've departmentalized investor relations of all companies of size, frankly. Now, so you've got. You know, 3,000 companies or whatever they have, and they all have departments. And each one of them has an investor relations department practically, and their job is to say, this is the best thing you can do today is buy our stock. Well, the whole concept is totally idiocy. But it's a big business, and it gets bigger, and the investor relations department gets bigger, and, you know, and it's what we have now. But do a little of your own work. your own way, but Berkshire Hathaway has got plenty of material out there for you to read. And when you get through reading it all, you'll know way more than most of the people that work at Berkshire. So you don't need a personal interview. If we take it, if we take an hour of times, even the 40,000 people we may have here, or bless Becky's many listeners and viewers, it just doesn't work. So I admire your effort, but you'll just have to settle for that as the admiration that you get in this.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Morning Session - 2025 Meeting

“Yeah, I, we own a lot of companies, but I do like to think I know most of them, but the, it may be a subsidiary of a subsidiary in some way, but, but I really don't know a thing about it. I'm sorry, but that may be a good thing. I do know something about hot dogs, though, so yeah. And we do have a lot of companies in short. Chicago Warren. Yeah. Through Marman. And that's been a great opportunity where we've accumulated a variety of excellent companies under that portfolio. But as you noted, I don't believe Portillo's fault under that. Yeah. No, I look at the financial statements of about, yeah, perhaps 50 or 60 of our companies every month, but in the case of Marmon, for example, Marman itself owns over 100 companies. And it was the creature of, it was created by Jay Pritzker and his brother, Bob. And it was a remarkable company when we bought it, but it was highly diversified already, and then we've diversified it further. So it is something of a lot. But Berkshire within Berkshire. And we found that that's working. We go to his arrangement. It was interesting. Jay Pritzker was a workable manager, and there's various branches of the Pritzker family. So, you know, really goes back to A.N. Pritzker before Jay and so on. But in 1954, you know, it really goes back to A& Pritzker before J and so on. they changed the federal tax code very dramatically in the United States. It was quite a blow to me because I've been at Columbia and I'd been reading a J.K. Lassar book about the tax code and then they went and changed the whole damn thing, so I did. But 54 was a big year, a big change. Those years come every now and then like 1986 and you may see a big one of these days. And there was a company called Rockwood Chocolates in Rockwood Chocolate Bits, which we used to sell at the Buffett grocery store, and people made chocolate chip cookies out of them and everything. And then it turned out that Coco, which lately has had a big run to, Coco was five cents a pound in 1941 when LIFO was first allowed for, for it was five cents a pound. for insurance for for for the tax purposes at the rock which off company went into on the life old message so they they owned like 30 million pounds or thereabouts of cocoa and then cocoa took a run in 1955 and I just moved to New York and there was a provision in the new york and there was a provision in the new york and there was a provision”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Morning Session - 2025 Meeting

“code that if you were in two or more companies and did certain things and you've been in them for five years and you got out of one of them that there would be no capital gains tax on life all inventory gains and tax rates were around 48% maybe 52% and so you there was this huge profit because because the the cocoa had gone up in price but that made it terrible for them in selling rock with chocolate bits because the price of retail of the chocolate bits did not match what was going on at wholesale something almost identical has been happening in the chocolate business recently Hershey Chocolate just came out and said they're going to have a bad quarter and we're paying $4 and 50 cents a pound for chocolate from cocoa because things are going on in West Africa that that make I think Coco prices go up dramatically. In any event, Jay Pritzker bought control of Rockwood, the chocolate company. And like I say, I was 24 or 5 years old, and they called a meeting to split off the two, one of the chocolate businesses in a way that would enable them to recognize the gain on this, these cocoa, beans without paying 50% roughly 50% federal taxes on the game. So I went to the meeting, which was in Brooklyn, and nobody was there. This is in the turn-every-page category, except one guy, and I was 24, and he was 29, and it was Jay Pritzker, and nobody had showed up at the meeting and it was kind of a crummy building they had, but they had a lot of cocoa there. And Jay just gave me a lecture, or a lesson, really, I should say, on the tax coat. And I made it with that, I could have gone to graduate school for years and never learned as much as he did. And then later, we actually bought the company, that rockwood company, but after he did some other things, became the basis for Marmon. And Marmon, among other things, developed the car that won the first Indianapolis Speedway race. And it invented the rear view mirror, which I'm not sure is a great advantage in economics or anything, but the guy that would, they used to have on the Indianapolis 500, they had two people in the car. One guy was to look back and see what the other people were doing, and the other guy was to drive the car. And our guy got sick. And so they invented a rearview mirror. So if you want to look at the kind of, you know, what's going on in the laboratories of Berkshire Hathaway, and we've got people working on things like the rearview mirror.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Afternoon Session - 2025 Meeting

“Well, we don't know how much we'll lose out of Pacific Corp and decisions that are made, but we also know that that certain of the attitudes demonstrated By that particular example, I've got analogs throughout the utility system and we, there's a lot of states that so far have been very good, decent to operate in, and there are some now, they're rat poison, as Charlie would say, to operate in, and that knowledge was accentuated. when we saw what happened in the Pacific Northwest, and it's accentuated by what we've seen as to how utilities have been treated in certain other situations. And then on top of that, so that it wasn't just a direct question of what was involved, that Pacific Corp, was an extrapolation of a societal trend. And secondly, we also had a decision we didn't expect that at all of the real estate business and and those kind of things can change values and courts can change values and it's a lot easier to make those decisions when you just own marketable securities and when you own businesses and I've made plenty of those decisions as I watched what have happened in various industries and companies and over 70 years but Greg made the decision, which was fine with us to get out. Well, and he had no knowledge of what was going to be happening in either the real estate field or the utility field, and we would, we don't, we're not in the mood to solve any business, but the Berkshire-Hathaway energy is worth considerably less money than it was two years ago based on societal factors.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Afternoon Session - 2025 Meeting

“And that happens in some of our businesses. It certainly happened to our textile business, and it's happened. The public utility business is not as good a business as it was a couple of years ago. And if anybody doesn't believe that, they can look at Hawaii and electric, and they look in the Edison in the current wildfires situation in California, and there's societal little trends that are, oh, I just got a note here on my monitors that the books are now sold out. So, you know, I'm spending your money on other things. Here's fudge. This is what I'm eating, so, yeah. But that's the explanation that the values change and they don't always change upward. And when we made the deal with Greg, we would happy to buy out. Scott family at that price. And when we made a deal with the Scott company, we wouldn't have been happy to pay Greg the price that he received. But that's like Berkshire shares. We bought in stock at X and we buy in stock at less than X if conditions change poor. And we pay, over the years, we pay more and more because it builds in value. But it doesn't do it in the straight line. And I would say that our enthusiasm for buying. public utility companies is different than now than it would be would have been a couple years ago. That happens in other industries too, but it's pretty dramatic in public utilities and it's particularly dramatic in public utilities because they are going to need lots of money. So if you're going to need lots of money, you probably ought to behave in a way that encourages people to give you lots of money and we will see where we go. We'd like to see public utilities do well, but we are responsible. responsibilities with the shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Morning Session - 2025 Meeting

“Yep. I'm happy a friend did call. So that still works. Peter Eastwood, who runs one of our Berkshire subsidiaries. and does a great job of running it, a track down that Portellos is owned by a private equity firm called Berkshire Partners. So that was the basis of the question, but it's not associated with Berkshire. So we got to the bottom of that one. Yeah. Thank you, Peter. That's just a sample the way we operate around Berkshire. Okay. Becky.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Morning Session - 2025 Meeting

“Well, I would say that Jessica, who I believe is, it sounds as she is the step-granddaughter of one of our managers that I mentioned in the annual report may not be the same one. But in any event, America's been insignificant and revolutionary change, really ever since it was developed. I mentioned that, you know, we started out as an agricultural society. We started out as a society with high promises, and we didn't deliver out of very well. We said all men were created equal, and then we wrote a constitution and said blacks get three counted as three-fifths, and in an article two, you'll find male pronouns used 20 times and no female pronouns used. You know, it took till 2000, I mean, you know, 2000, or 1920, I should say, until the 19th, until the 19th Amendment was passed, saying, oh, yeah, we promised the women just back in 1776, and now we'll do something about it. And then we didn't do something about it for a long time. So we're always in the process of change. We'll always find all kinds of things to criticize. in the country. But the luckiest day in my life is the day I was born. You know, I was born in the United States. And at the time, about 3% of all the births in the world were taking place in the United States. And I'd like to say that I had something to do, you know, listen, sent messages out to my parents, for God's sakes, moved to the United States before I've born or anything.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Morning Session - 2025 Meeting

“But I was just lucky. And I was lucky to be born bail. I was lucky to be worn white. And it was like all kinds of things. But it's been, if you don't think the United States has changed since I was born in 1930, it's been, we've gone through all kinds of things. And we've gone through great recessions. We've gone through world wars. We've gone through the development of atomic bomb that we never dreamt of, you know, at the time I was born. So I would not get discouraged about the fact that that it never doesn't look like. like if we solved a very problem that's come along, and if I were being born today, you know, I would just keep negotiating in the womb until they said you can be in the United States. So we're all pretty lucky. We've got two non-United States guys here just to get the other side. Who now live in the U.S. Okay, station four.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Afternoon Session - 2025 Meeting

“Yeah, well, I think our underlying earning power was affected negatively here a while back by what happened in the utility field. I think that our underlying earning power was affected negatively here a while back by what happened in the utility field. I think that our earning power was not enlarged by any large by any large acquisitions that come along, but they come along periodically. So we will see something at some point that, well, you know, on the one that was $10 billion, we would have added to our earning power. I mean, why else would we do it? So that's very... be situational. And of course, it depends so much on what the general market is doing and what interest rates are doing and what psychology is doing. We will make our best deals when people are the most pessimistic. You know, that's been true. Ever since I was 1930, born in 1930, when I was born, things got much more attractive over the next two years, and apparently I didn't do anything about it there. But, you know, that was the opportunity of a lifetime, and I blew it by worrying about the kid in the next crib or something. But over my lifetime, you know, I've had fabulous opportunities sometimes, and they happen because humans are human. And I don't, you know, I'm fearful of all kinds of things. I don't want to try and, you know, be one of the Walundas and walk on a tiny strip between a couple of Twin Towers or something or whatever it may be, but I don't get, you know, I just, I don't get fearful by things that other people get, are afraid of in the financial, in the financial way. And, you know, the idea that if Berkshire went, let's say Berkshire went down 50 percent. next week, I would regard that as a fantastic opportunity, and it wouldn't bother me in the least. And most people aren't—they just react differently. And so it doesn't—it's not that I don't have emotions, but I don't have emotions about the prices of stocks. I mean, I actually—those decisions get all the way to my brain, whereas emotions can—get bogged down some other place. sure will increase its earning power over time as we retain money. I mean, we are doing things, making decisions every day. People are working who are retaining earnings. We'll build the earning power, but it won't be coming in any even stream, and it certainly won't be matched dollar for dollar on either the upside or the downside and market prices.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Morning Session - 2025 Meeting

“Well, that's a good question. There are times when you have to act fast. In fact, we made a great deal of money because we're willing to act faster than anybody around. Jessica Tooms is, I think, she's the stepdaughter of, our step-granddaughter of Ben Rosner, manager of ours. And in 1966, I got a call from a phone name, Pell Steiner, and New York. And he said, I represent actually nine Annenberg sisters, I believe, before War Annenberg came along as the son. But he said, we have a business we'd like to sell you. So I called Charlie up. And I got a few details. And it sounded very interesting. And when I went back to the office of Will Falstiner in New York was a marvelous guy. Never met him since. But he was handling. things for Mrs. Well, A. Simon, but she her name was Annabert. And her husband had been the partner of, but he had died. And Ben got kind of tense about working with her. And so offered us this business at a bargain price. He offered us a business for $6 million. It had $2 million of cash. It had a $2 million piece of property in the 900 block. of, of, what's the key street in Philadelphia down there, Market Street.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Morning Session - 2025 Meeting

“And it was making $2 million a year pre-tax, and the price was $6 million. And Charlie and I went back to this place. And Ben Rosner was there. And he really, he just was upset about doing business with his widow. She was extremely wealthy. And And he just didn't, he wasn't enjoying it. He was very nervous about selling it. And he said to me and Charlie, he said, I'll run this business for you until December 31st. And then I'm out of here. I got Charlie, we went out in the hallway, and I said, if this guy quits, at the end of the year, you can throw away every book on psychology if I've ever read. And so that began a wonderful, we bought the company. I had a great relationship. And did I know that morning when I got a phone call from Will Falstiner? There'd been a background about, I've had a couple of times, and that was one of them where people in the East, they had a stereotype in their mind of what people from the Midwest were like. And Ben had been married, his first marriage was to him. woman from Iowa, and he just figured that anybody from the Midwest was okay. And the trick when you do, when you get in the business with somebody, they get in a room with somebody like that and they want to sell you something for $6 million that's got $2 million of cash and a couple million of real estate and it's making me $2 million a year. You don't, you don't want to be patient then. You want to be patient in waiting to get the occasional call. My phone will ring sometime. And with something that, you know, wakes me up. I may be sleeping in there or something, but you just never know when it'll happen. And that's what makes it, what makes it fun. I mean, it's, so patience, it's a combination of patience and willingness to do something that afternoon if it comes to you. You don't want to be, you don't want to be patient about acting on deals that makes sense. And you don't want to be very patient with people that are talking to you about things that will never happen. So it's not a constant asset. It's not a constant ability to be patient.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Afternoon Session - 2025 Meeting

“Well, it's always better to make a lot of money without putting up anything than it is to make a lot of money by putting up a lot of money. And so a business that takes no capital. to speak of Coca-Cola, the finished product, which has gone to a bottling companies and everything, that takes a lot of capital. But in terms of the selling the syrup or the concentrate that goes to it, it doesn't take a lot of capital. So one is a fabulous business and one is a, you know, it depends where it is and everything like that. Coca-Cola is popular every place. But some places, I mean, if you're in the bottling business, it costs real money. You have real trucks out there and you have all kinds of machinery, and you have capital expenditures coming up. And, you know, we've got businesses that take very little capital that make really high returns on capital. And the ones the politicians talk about is making high returns actually aren't making high returns usually in terms of capital. But insurance, property casual insurance is kind of a rare business because you need capital as a guarantee fund that you will keep your promises. But you can use it to buy other low intensive capital business. I mean, you can buy a whole, you can buy Apple and have it support that business. So that can be a pretty good business and it's one of the reasons we've done well over time. But it'll be interesting to see how much capital intensity there. Certainly there's more capital intensity going on with the Magnificent Seven than there was a few years ago. I mean, basically Apple has not really needed any capital over the years. And it's repurchased shares that a dramatic amount of reduction, whether that world is the”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Afternoon Session - 2025 Meeting

“same in the future or not in something. Hollywood's answer was always to get their money from other people to put up the capital. A lot of people have gotten very rich in the country by essentially figuring out how to get others put up the capital. And that's what people do in the money management business, and they get very, very rich because they get an override on other people's capital. And incidentally, if all of you were paying 1% for investment management fees at Berkshire last year you had to pay $8 billion for managing and you really wouldn't have had to do it. But investment management is a very good game because other people put up the capital and you charge them for the capital. if they do well or not, and then you can charge them a lot more if they do well. I mean, it's a well-designed business for the people who practice it and who can blame them. I mean, that's that is capitalism, but, and I saw that in operation when I was working at Solomon, but I didn't need to see it, and I knew what existed anyway. The trick in life is to get somebody else's capital and get an override on it. Charlie and I decided it wasn't too elegant in the business after a while, but we weren't, we were not criticizing the efficacy of it. We were just, it just didn't appeal to us after a while. I did it for 12 years though or something like, not really, the one difference that Charlie and I did from other people is we put all our own money in and do it, so we really, we did share the losses and with our own capital, but we got an override on other people's capital. And that's been—people have made advances where they get the override on other people's capital without putting up any of their own capital, to speak of, and that's—that's a very good business, but it leads—it can lead to a lot of abuse. You've watched capital management in the United States, and would you say? that Canada is behind her in this respect?”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Morning Session - 2025 Meeting

“Absolutely. And you can't be filled with self-doubt in the business. You just forget it. it's going to some other activity. But you also, I mean, one of the great pleasures, it is the great pleasure actually in this business, is having people trust you. And that's really the, why work at 91, you've got more money than anybody could count, you know, if they started today and having machines that are helping them and everything else. It means nothing in terms of how you're going to live or how your children are going to live or how your children are going to live or anything else. And it, but both Charlie and I, we just enjoyed the fact that people trusted us and they trusted us 60 years ago or 70 years ago in partnerships we had. And we never sought out professional investors. to join our partnerships. Among all of my partners, I never had a single institution. I never wanted an institution. I wanted people. And I didn't want people that were sitting around and having people present to them every three months and tell them what they wanted to hear and all that sort of things. And that's what we got. And that's why we've got this group here today. So it's all worked out. But that, you know, we know, I want to be patient when the time comes to act. You want to get it done that day.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Afternoon Session - 2025 Meeting

“at another country, Australia, or wherever it may be. But so there's, it's different, but when you think, when I think of capitalism, that that drive is there and, and in the desire to, you know, allocate capital properly, it's very similar. It's produced wonders in the United States, if you think about it. But originally, with the Roderfellers and Kennedy and Carnegie's and all it, they actually put up money to build steel mill, you know, whatever it may have been, with the Roger Fowler refineries and pipelines and all that sort of thing, they put up money to do it. Now the trick is to use other people's money, basically, and, you know, you can't blame human beings for behaving like humans, but you should be aware of what their motivations are. It's a capitalism in the United States has succeeded like nothing you've ever seen, but it has, what it is is a combination of this magnificent cathedral. which is produced an economy like nothing the world's ever seen, and then it's got this massive casino attached. So you've got the cathedral and the casino, and in the casino, everybody's having a good time and there's lots of money changing hands and everything, but the cathedral is what, got to make sure the cathedral gets fed too, because the temptation, and the temptation is very high now, is to go over the casino where people say, you know, we've got magic boxes and all kinds of things that will do wonderful things for you. That's where people are happiest. That's where you get the most promise to you. That's where the most money is for the people that are pushing things. And, you know, the balance between the capital, the casino and the cathedral and the cathedral. It's very important that the United States in the next 100 years make sure that the cathedral is not overtaken by the casino. Because people really like to go to casinos. And it's just so much more fun. And they bring bells when you win, and they bring you drinks and everything else. And it's designed to move money from one pocket to another. And in the cathedrals, they basically are designing things that will be producing goods and services for 300 and some million people like it's never been done before. history. It's an interesting system we've developed, but it's work. It dispenses rewards in what seems like a terribly capricious manner. I mean, the idea that people get what they deserve in life. And it's hard to make that argument. If you argue with it any other system”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Morning Session - 2025 Meeting

“No, it's a fascinating case study, but that's what's so interesting about the whole game of business, but particularly about our businesses, is that each one is a little different But they're all, they all have challenges of certain sorts, but they also, many, certain numbers have opportunities. We paid $50 million for half of GEICO in 1970s, what turned out to be half of GEICO, 50 million, 50 million, we now own 100%, but 50% of $2 billion that we earned in the first”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Morning Session - 2025 Meeting

“quarter is a billion. which on a $50 million investment is, you know, $20 for one and a quarter. So it takes years to develop. But the interesting thing is the auto insurance policy, which didn't even exist 100 years ago. I mean, you didn't, it just, well, I should say 120 years ago. But it's by far the largest item in the property casualty. insurance business. It's huge.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Morning Session - 2025 Meeting

“Oh, yeah, in addition, yeah. And that's not unimportant when you paid $50 million to get the businesses giving you $29 billion to work with for nothing. And on top of that, gives you a billion dollars of profit in a quarter. The interesting thing about auto insurance is that we are, the company was starting, at 1936. We're selling the same product as 1936. We're being more sophisticated about pricing it than we were then. Somebody just made the judgment, a fellow that came from USAAA, made the judgment that government employees, the name Geico stands for government employees insurance company, that government employees were better drivers than average. And I don't think was an actuary or anything else, but he just made an observation. And so he left USAAA, which is still a very successful company. And he started GEICO for a few hundred thousand dollars. And he made money the first year for my underwriting. He made money the second year. This is not a public offering type thing, you know. He was phonedyney accounting for 10 years and all that sort of thing. They just priced it to make money. And that's exactly. exactly what's been done since 1936. The policy really, you know, your insurance, your auto insurance policy looks a lot like the one that you had done. And this huge field has sprung up around us and it's still growing. And, of course, nobody likes to buy insurance, but they sure like to drive. And, and, and, uh, uh, uh, Geico is, it's a fascinating story. And about three times over the years. The company has gotten sidetracked one way or another. And then it gets back to its basics. And it's a wonderful, wonderful business. And we showed at this annual meeting one time, a message from Lorimer Davidson. And Lorimer Davidson in January of 1950. He was the only person in a building that I'd gone down on a Saturday to visit. But it turned out they didn't work on Saturdays in Washington. And I pounded down the door until finally”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Afternoon Session - 2025 Meeting

“Well, that's a good question. The teachers you get in your life have this incredible impression on you, and a lot of it are the formal teachers you have, but some are informal teachers too. I mean, I learned from certain employers, you know, so much. You really I hope you're running from everybody you find who's well-intentioned and has had a lot of experience. And I had a lot of good luck in that, but I would say that what, well, what I was really lucky was my dad was in the investment business. So I would go down on Saturday and I'd wait for him to go to lunch with and I'd read the books that were around there that nobody else ever read. They talked to me, numbers talked to me, and I could never get my fellow of them, and then I discovered the public library, and I read every book there was on investments, literally, in the Omaha Public Library at 19th at Harney. And, you know, I enjoyed learning about that. And unlike Charlie, if Charlie was reading about electricity, he would want to know everything that Thomas Edison knew and more and that goes through the same thought processes and understand how everything worked. I didn't care whether how it worked. I just cared whether it worked. And that's a limitation. I'm confessing here. I'm not bragging. But, you know, the, as Charlie would say, I mean, people would always say if you could only have lunch with one person living or dead, who would it be? And Charlie said, I've already had lunch with all of them, because I've already had lunch with all of them, because read all their books, you know, basically. And so, and he really did a, I think having curiosity and actually finding sympathetic teachers is very useful. I ran into a couple of teachers that, both in high school and college. In fact, I would say that I went to three different higher, you know, three different universities, and I went to high school in Washington and”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Afternoon Session - 2025 Meeting

“At each place, I found about two or three really outstanding people. And I just spent my time with them and didn't pay much attention to the other classes. And I was lucky to find something that really fit me very early on. If my ambition had been to become a ventriloquist or, you know, whatever the hell it might have been. And it wouldn't work. You know, I just spent hours and hours and hours, and I wouldn't have been any good when I got through. So I don't believe that. I think there was that book that talked about spending 10,000 hours at somebody. I could spend 10,000 hours at tap dancing and you'd throw up if you watched me, you know. But if I spent, if I spent up 10 hours reading Ben Graham, I would be damn smarter when I got through. So minds are really, really different. I watch great bridge players, and I watch great physicians, great. I mean, people really, really, really, really have different talents. And, you know, I don't know, I think you're supposed to have 88 billion cells in your brain. I'm not sure that all of mine are flashing bright lights, but you are different than anybody else. my dad always used to tell me that essentially that, you know, you're something different. It may not be good, as a poet, but, but you find your own, you find your own path, and you will find the people in schooling that want to talk to you. People to teach in general, they love having a young student who's really interested in the subject and they'll spend extra time with you and they'll do all kinds of things that and I ran into that, I had Graham and Dodd at Columbia, well Dave Dodd treated me like a son basically and I was interested in, excuse me, I was just in what they were saying and they found it kind of entertaining and I was so interested in. And so I would just, I would look around or do you, you know, what really fascinates you. I wouldn't try and be somebody else. And then I would, you'll find the teachers at a school and you'll find some outstanding people that are teachers. I've had at least 10 people that have had huge impacts on my life. And every one of those positive, you know, because I got to select in a sense. And a number of people really like helping younger people. You know, I found that in school. And probably helps to look a little bit lost at all. Like you need help. But I would say my school experiences were good, but we're really very good, but really very good.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Morning Session - 2025 Meeting

“a janitor brought me in. And I said, this is a janitor? Is there anybody I can talk to here except you? He didn't take it personally. And he said, well, there's one guy up on the sixth floor. And a fellow named Lero and Orimer Davidson did wonderful things for me. You get a few breaks in life in terms of people you will meet who can just change your life dramatically. And if you need a handful of those, and when you get them, you treasure them. And we've had them on this board of Berkshire. We, you know, if you take Tom Murphy and Sandy Goddismund and Walter Scott and Bill Scott, The one thing we've done is we've held on to human assets. We've made lifelong assets out of people that are the right sort. And with incredible talent, but also just lots of fun to work with and always doing more than their share. And, you know, to get a chance to talk to Lorimer Davidson on a Saturday afternoon, you just listen carefully. And that comes in the... in the category of turn every page. Some of them you want to turn pretty fast, but you just get lucky in life. And you want to take advantage of your luck.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Morning Session - 2025 Meeting

“Thank you. Well, you've hit on the most important question in terms of the business. We've got a wonderful group of businesses. We've got an ability to do things that nobody else can do, which is hard to get it in the capitalistic system that's been developed as fully as the United States has been. I mean, imagine being able to create something that in a very, very, very big playing field. I don't think you'd really be very, very hard to develop anything like about. I don't think you could develop the people around it, let alone the capital position, you know, the history and everything else. And the answer, of course, is that it does take a long, long time.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Morning Session - 2025 Meeting

“And it takes getting around you a small cadre of people, which then spreads out somewhat. somewhat, but you've got mutual trust where people do more than their share. And I've been around a lot of businesses over the years, and by nature, I'm somewhat critical of everything. I mean, I'm looking for what's wrong in things, because that's part of investing is looking, you know, what aren't you, what are you missing? People that they're asked to put on a show. like this instead of doing whatever their regular job is, they participated. I went around the groups of people who were exhibiting yesterday for an hour and a half. And these are people who are thanking me, you know, and totally enthused about coming and doing a lot of work for which they don't get paid or anything extra, and I don't know anything about the arrangements of the individual companies make, but they work hard and they enjoy their work. And, you know, you really want to work as something you enjoy. I've always had, I've had five bosses in life, and I liked every one of them. And they were all interesting. I still decided that I'd rather work for myself than anybody else. But if you find people that are wonderful to work with, you know, that's the place to go. And I've told my kids that basically that you don't get lucky like I did when I found at seven or eight years of age, what really interested me, you know, it could have taken a lot longer, but you want to find the song, find the sound, there's a movie called The Glen Miller Story, and Glenn Miller went on from having a broken down band for 15 years to turning out the first, he found the sound and, and, uh, and, and, and, uh, and creating a broken down band for 15 years to, the first gold record, I don't know whether any of you know what it was, but it was to Chattanooga Choochoochoo, in 1941, I think it was. And he turned around from being a nothing, and with a band that he had until he found the sound. And I always have told my kids ever since that their sound isn't my sound, you know, but, and you don't find it necessarily. on the first job you take, because you got to eat, you know, but if you get lucky like I did, you find it to be, you find it when you're very young. And then, you know, just keep doing it, and, uh, and don't worry, don't worry too much about starting salaries and don't worry about, about, uh, and be very careful who you work for”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Afternoon Session - 2025 Meeting

“but I attribute it much more to the individual than to the institutions. Okay, I've already told you more than I know, so we'll go on to, Becky, you're next. This question comes from Scott Williams in Portland, Oregon. He said, do you think the net benefit of Doge will be positive or negative for the long-term health of the United States? Well, why don't you give me a hard one? I think that bureaucracy is something that is something that is amazingly prevalent and contagious, even in our capital system. And that big corporations, you know, overwhelmingly, most of them look like they could be run better. I'm sure Berkshire does in many respects. government is the ultimate. So it really doesn't have any checks on it. And that's why it scares you to some extent about what the future of the currency will be because they can print currency. And if you have people that get elected by promising people things, and that doesn't mean that they aren't sincere about all kinds of things. items, but there's no politician that says to anybody that, at least if they have money, that, you know, I really think you have bad breath. And if you don't mind, would you just step over and away from me? It just doesn't happen. They, uh, and so I, I think the problem of how you control revenue and expenses in government is the one that is never fully solved. And as, it's really, dramatically certain many civilizations and I don't think we're immune from it and we've come close to it. But if you tell me how in democracy you go in and we need change things, you know, we're operating at a fiscal deficit now that is unsustainable over a very long period of time. We don't know whether that means two years or 20 years. Because there's never been a country like the United States. But, you know, that if something can't go on forever, it will end, to quote, Herbert Snyder, a famous economist. And we are doing something that is unsustainable. And it has the aspect to it that it gets uncontrollable to it, that it gets uncontrollable to a certain point. I mean, essentially, you just give up on it. And a vulgar happening in the United States. But we came close. We've come close multiple times. And, you know, the, we've still had very substantial inflation in the United States, but it's never been run away yet. And that's not something you want to try and experiment with because it feeds on itself. So I wouldn't want”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Afternoon Session - 2025 Meeting

“the job of trying to correct what's going on revenue and expenditures in the United States with roughly a 7% gap when probably a 3% gap is sustainable. And then the further away you get from that, the more you get to where the uncontrollable begins. And I think that it's a job I don't want, but it's a job I think should be done. And Congress does not seem good at doing it.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Morning Session - 2025 Meeting

“because you will take on the habits of the people around. just so there's certain, certain jobs you shouldn't take. But you've got the greatest country in the world and you've got the greatest time in the world. So, I would say that, that, well, I'm handing this over to Greg, that you can't even dream all the dreams that you could have about a place like Berkshire, but the big thing you have to do, though, is always, is to be sure you can play the next day. I mean, in terms of, in terms of financial activities on a meaningful scale, uh, I want to go, you don't, you don't, you don't, you only have to get rich once. I mean, you don't, you don't want to do anything that risks. It's been created. So you don't, you know, if very stupid things are happening around you, you do know and not want to participate. If people were making more money because they're borrowing money or they're participating in securities that are really pieces of junk, but, but they hope to find a bigger sucker later on. You just have to forget that. That'll bite you at some point. And the basic game is so good, and you've been so lucky to be born now. I mean, if I've been born in 1700, I'd say, I'll I want to go back in the womb. What the hell with this? It's too hard. And, but now I've come along to do something where I can just play around all day with things I enjoy doing. And, uh, and, uh, it's really, uh, it's a pretty wonderful life. Greg, you want to subtract from that?”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Morning Session - 2025 Meeting

“If you don't find it immediately, you know, uh, don't starve the death or anything in the meantime, but, but, uh, you will find it, and you'll, you'll find it in, in the right individual, and in the sense, it's somewhat like finding the right person in marriage.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Afternoon Session - 2025 Meeting

“always as a country, but this is one we bring on ourselves. I mean, we have a revenue stream, a capital producing stream, a brains producing machine, like the world has never seen. And if you picked a way to screw it up, it would involve the currency. And that's happened a lot of places then. And the incentives. the checks. Well, there aren't any real checks. In theory, you would make it. So there was substantial downside for anybody that screwed things up. But there isn't downside. There's upside. So it's the most successful company in the history of the country and the history of the world. And at this point, we got a little room to go and solving them. With that, I'll shut up and go on to Station 3.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Afternoon Session - 2025 Meeting

“Well, I'm probably, that's a good question, but I would probably, probably said to Ben Franklin, you just keep thinking and don't talk to me because you'll come up with some better ideas than I will. He was, you know, incredibly remarkable person. I mean, he would say he's almost probably the last person to almost have a grasp of every, every aspect of, of activity in the country. He invented all kinds of things, and he invented all kinds of things. And he, incidentally, we were talking about compound interest and that sort of thing. He left a will that left a sum of money to Philadelphia and another sum to Boston that would serve as an example for a couple hundred years, you know, of the power of compounding and all kinds”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Afternoon Session - 2025 Meeting

“of things that he was so far ahead of his time that the best thing I could do if I was under that tree with him was to get out of his way. A lot of me just keep thinking, but he saw the problems. Success could bring to a society as well as problems, I mean, more immediate problems that, all kinds of fields. Problems of how to cause, how to take eight billion people, because there's no way we can separate. ourselves from the rest of the world. We can be an example to the rest of the world, and I think it behooves us since we have had all this good fortune in this country, and we do have a pretty good system. I don't think it, I don't think you get, I don't think you get very far by lecturing the world on how, you or the, the, the one that should tell them what they should do with our lives. I think I think you get a certain amount of resentment when just a few hundred years ago, a whole different group of countries were running the world. And now you start giving them advice. And I think it's a real mistake in communication and persuasion to lecture a buncher of people or you've just won the game. I mean, but anyway, I would say that I would advise, Ben, to figure out how to figure out how to win the game and keep a certain amount of humility at the same time. And I would tell them to try and design a system that doesn't invent too many things that can destroy the planet, you know, that become uncontrollable once you get them out there. There was no alternative to us developing that at a bomb, but, but the expansion of the number of people that have the ability from one to eight and nine probably pretty soon with Iran. I mean, that mistake the society just could not afford to make. I mean, solving the problem with nine variables instead of simply one. Now, it's totally understandable. My dad was in Congress when the atom bomb was first used. It's amazing how Sam Ray Brewery and kept the House of Representatives uninformed because they are supposed to appropriate all the money and had 435 congressmen there and they had no idea they were appropriating money for Los Alamos or what was going on in Chicago or what was going on in Tennessee. But anyway, do have a society that is far beyond than they've been Franklin dreamt of. It's achieved some of the the or is it she it's moving toward in the right direction toward solving some problems where we made kind of broad declarations about all men being created equal and and et cetera and then we”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Morning Session - 2025 Meeting

“I mean, and, uh, probably the first, some of you married, may have married the person you made, met on your first date, although I guess they don't even have dates. anymore, but the, but the, uh, but, you know, it's, uh, sometimes it pays to wait, too.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Morning Session - 2025 Meeting

“Yeah, well, we always have pretty much. The Japanese situation is different because we do intend to stay so long with that position. And the funding situation, situation is so cheap that we essentially have attempted to some degree to match purchases against the end denominated of funding. But that's not a policy of ours. In fact, that's the first time we've done that. And we've owned lots of securities in foreign currency. So we do nothing in terms of the question about its impact on quarterly and annual earnings. We don't do anything based on its impact on quarterly and annual earnings. I mean, there's never been a board meeting I can remember where I, or the conversation I had with Charlie when I said, where I say, if we do this, our annual earnings will be this, you know, and therefore, we ought to, whether it's accounting or anything, we just, you know, the number will turn out to be what it'll be, what counts is where we are five or 10 or 20 years from now. And if you start focusing on what number you're going to produce, you will quickly get tempted, at least based on the experience I've seen from viewing 20 companies, you will get so you'll, one some way or another, I'll play around with the numbers and sometimes seriously play around with the numbers. And I've seen people that, you know, I trust them in all kinds of other ways, but they regard playing around with numbers is perfectly okay. And that's just not something, you know, we just don't think about that. So actually, the relationship, the relationship. of the end, behavior of the end in the last quarter, you know, resulted in certain gap”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Afternoon Session - 2025 Meeting

“did some of the things we did but generally speaking we moved in the right direction uh but we face problems that i don't know what how how ben Franklin would would uh attack the problem of what you do once you get weapons of mass destruction in many hands and when you essentially look at the world as something where there are winners and losers and that the winners are you know humiliate the losers and do all kinds of things I said I'll let the people are a lot younger here figure out the answers on that but it's still the most wonderful that there's never been anything you could dream like what this happened in the United States so we still it's it's the best place and the best time to be alive by by miles in the street just think of a couple hundred years ago and somebody you know yanking out a few of your teeth and pouring whiskey down you and doing it I mean and it's subsistence and and particularly in this Midwest just imagine waiting until the Missouri froze over every year just to see what if you get your wagon across and maybe have a pregnant woman in the back you know with it's just amazing what has happened a positive nature during my lifetime and then the question is is how do you how do you keep it and how do you improve it and uh i do think that fundamental to all of it though is having a it's having a currency that that does not get debaished what that does to the stability of a society where all the people that trust their government get screwed and all the people that figure out ways to profit off of it become rich or richer i i don't think you want a society that operates in that manner so anyway let's see that was section three so we're going to becky is that right”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Morning Session - 2025 Meeting

“charges and, uh, but it doesn't make it, it doesn't make any difference. It'll change next, you know, next month or next year. And, and obviously, we wouldn't want to be owning anything that we thought was in a currency that was really going to hell. And that's the big thing we worry about with the United States currency. I mean, it's the the tendency of a government to want to debase its currency over time is there's no system that beats that. You can pick dictators, you can pick representatives, you can do anything, but the people, there will be a push toward weaker currencies, and of course, that is, I mentioned very briefly in the annual report that the fiscal policy is what scares me in the United States. because it's made the way it is and all the motivations are doing a lot of things that will cause, can cause trouble with money. But that's not limited to the United States. It's all over the world. And some places it gets out of control regularly. As I know, they know, they know, no, they know. They devalue it rates that are breathtaking, and that's continued. I mean, people can study economics and you can have all kinds of arrangements, but in the end, if you've got people that control the currency, you can issue, or you can engage in clipping currencies like they used to do centuries ago or be people, the nature of their job. I don't, I'm not singing them out as particularly evil or anything like that, but the natural course of government is to, is to make the currency worth less over time and, and it's got important consequences. And it's very hard to build checks and balances into the system to keep that from happening. And we've had a lot of fun here in the last, either the first 100 days of the last 100 days of the last 100 days. whatever you want to call it, the watching what happens when people try to make sure that they aren't running fiscal risks and that game isn't over and it never will be over, you know, in finality. If you look up in search the great inflations, most World War II, it's just a list that goes on forever and the same names keep popping up. and everything. So currency is a, the value of currency is a scary thing. And, and, uh, don't have any great system for beating that. Do in this particular Japanese position, because we expect to hold it for 50 or 100 years or more. And we will be owning something that's denominated in the end and easily predictable.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Morning Session - 2025 Meeting

“And we'll just, as long as the, the carry on it is right and everything, we'll, will, uh, will, will, will, uh, will, will, attempt to issue Japanese denominated liabilities. But that's not because of anything we carry about in terms of quarterly or annual earnings. Greg, do you have anything to say?”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Afternoon Session - 2025 Meeting

“it's working way better with the Greg than with me because you know I just I didn't want to work as hard as he works and and I could get away with it because we've got a basically good business very good business and and I wasn't in danger of you firing me by virtue of ownership and the fact that we would do pretty well but the fact that you can do pretty well doesn't mean you couldn't do better and and and great can do better at many things many people want to be managed need help in being managed some don't some you just leave alone uh you know we've had managers it would have been crazy to um uh started giving instructions to because they just quit and and i wouldn't blame them because i'd be the same type myself but uh a lot of people I mean people really do welcome direction and help and and you know and particularly when they're getting it from somebody like Greg that really lives the life himself and doesn't just come down from high and say you know here's what you do while I do something else you know and a manager that behaves differently than than what he's asking the people beneath them”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Morning Session - 2025 Meeting

“Yeah, we only made, as I referred to earlier, one big currency play, which was connected a little bit with when I wrote that article for fortune. And we got along 12 other currencies, as I remember, only four or five of them are really big currencies. But when I say we got longed, that means we're short the dollar. And so we held that position for a couple of years, and we made several billion dollars on it, which was significant to us then. So is. Charlie always felt that if he had to pick an area outside of stocks in which to invest. And he knew a lot about bonds. He knew a lot about real estate. He knew a lot about a lot of things. But he said the, he thought he could, he thought he could make a lot of money out of being in foreign currency. But we've done it once. It's not inconceivable. We would do it again. But it's unlikely. It would be things happen in the United States that would make us want to own a lot of other currencies. And I suppose if we, if he made some very large and investment, European country or some, there might be a situation where we would do a lot of financing in their currency, but it's not a, it was something that just was sort of obvious to do in the Japanese situation where we had the ability to borrow yen a very, very low carrying cost. And we felt very good about the income we'd be receiving from these securities. And if the present condition, which it won't, I mean, it never does, but fail for decades and decades, we would probably keep doing the same sort of thing. But things change in the world, too. So don't take that as a prediction. Okay. Section 6. Good morning, Warren and Greg Ejid. Thank you so much for hosting this event.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Afternoon Session - 2025 Meeting

“to behave it's it just doesn't work over time and uh people want a manager that they that they admire and they're not going to admire them if those people profess to be able in one manner and behave in another manner it's easier this is a sad thing but it's it's easier for an organization to see its quality move down downward than it is upward i mean it if if the boss behaves badly uh it causes everybody to to behave i mean it is really catching it's not as a catching on the way uh in upper management but but if the manager is doing a little things to grease his own situation pretty soon let's say you're running a little things to grease his own situation pretty soon let's say you're running retail establishment pretty soon all the employees or a lot of the employees are telling their friends that they they get a discount you know with the retail operation and if they want they want if their friend wants something they'll put it on their account and then before and get the discount once you start deviating downward it is really contagious and it is hard to rebuild so you really need something someone that that behaves well on top and is not playing games for their own benefit. And we get a lot of managers that bend over backwards not to do that sort of thing. And then we get a few to bend over forwards. And if you get enough companies, you're going to get a lot of different forms of behavior. And Greg does something about it and I've generally been laxed in doing. something about it, but he's done a way better job as that than I have.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Morning Session - 2025 Meeting

“Yeah. I have trouble planning a trip to Council Bloss, which is just few miles from here. But it takes an optimist. Actually, I met a fellow here at the annual meeting probably 20 years ago or more. Who did a lot in Mongolia? And he did very well in Mongolia and actually moved there for one. I would say that if you're looking for advice to give the government over there, it's not It's a developer reputation for having a solid currency over time. I mean, that we don't really want to go into any country where we think that there's a chance, I mean, a significant probability of runaway inflation. It's just, it's too hard to figure. Other people figured out ways to make money in hyperinflationary situations, but that's not our game. And I don't think I'd play it well. So we wouldn't be—that would be a factor with us. The chances are, and we won't find anything in Mongolia, it fits our size requirements aside from that. But like I say, I think my friend that I met here 20 years ago has done very well in Mongolia. And if the country develops a reputation for being— business-friendly and currency conscious, you know, I think that that bodes very well for the residents of that country, particularly if it has some other natural assets that it can build around. I don't know that much about the minerals there or anything of the sort, but who would have been on the United States in 1790, but. I have perfection. We just had to be better than the other guy for quite a while, and we started out with nothing,”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Morning Session - 2025 Meeting

“Okay. Okay. Yeah. Part of the question is very easy. There's no question the private equity firms have come into the space and we are no longer competitive in the space. We used to do a fair amount in this space. But in the last three, four years, I don't think you've done a single deal. Now, you ought to separate this whole segment in two separate segments. One is the property casualty end of the business and the life end of the business. The private equity firms that you mentioned are all very active in the life end of the business, not the property casualty end of the business. You are right in identifying the risks in these private equity firms are taking on both in terms of leverage and in terms of credit risk. And while the economy is doing great and credit spreads are low, these people, the private equity firms who've taken the assets from very conservative investments and I wouldn't say high octane, but they've certainly invested these assets in situations where that is where they get a lot more return on the investment. And as I said, as long as the economy is good and credits are low, they will make money, they'll make a lot of money because of leverage. However, there is always the danger that at some point the regulators might get cranky and say, you know, you're taking too much risk on behalf of your policyholders, and that could end in tears. We do not like the risk reward that these situations offer, and therefore we put up the white”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Morning Session - 2025 Meeting

“flag and said, you know, we can't compete it. the same thing right now. Yeah. People don't want to copy Berkshire's model, but usually they don't want to copy it by also copying the model of the CEO having all of his money in the company forever. And I mean, they've got a different equation. They're interested in, and that's capitalism, but they have a whole different situation, and they probably have a somewhat different fiduciary feeling. about what they're doing. And sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't work. And if it doesn't work, they go on to other things. And if I, what we do here at Berkshire doesn't work, I spend the end of my life regretting what I've created. So it's just a whole different personal equation. And there is no property casually company that can basically replicate Berkshire. Berkshire. That wasn't the case at the start. I mean, at the start, we just had national indemnity a few miles from here, and anybody could have duplicated what we had, but that was before a G. And the G came with us in 1986, and at that point, the other fellows should have given up.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Afternoon Session - 2025 Meeting

“Yeah. We're spending close, it's hard to get the precise figure, but close to 20% of GDP on health. And if you go back to 1960, there were a number of countries that were each spending around 5%. And then the lines began to diverge dramatically. But the mathematical fact that there are only 100 percentage points. in the equation didn't change. So we tried that experiment with J.B. Morgan and Amazon. And we had three people that didn't think they knew the answer, but thought that, in my case, I used to term, that it was a tapeworm in the economy. And we also found out that the tapeworm was alive in every part of the country.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Morning Session - 2025 Meeting

“Well, those are good questions. I wish I thought. of myself earlier in my life, the, you know, who you associate with is just enormously important. And don't expect that you'll make every decision right on that. I mean, but you, you are going to go into, you're going to have your life progress in the general direction of the people that you, that you work with, that you admire, that become your friends. I mentioned a few fellows that have died in the last couple of years. Well, all of those people were people that, that, that, you know, if we were working together on something, one, 10,000th of size of Berkshire, I mean, they'd be the kind of people you choose. You just, they're, there are people that make you want to be better than you are, and you want to hang out with people that are better than you are, and you want to hang out with people that are that are. feel are better than you are because you're going to go in the direction of the people that you”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Afternoon Session - 2025 Meeting

“I mean, the hospitals liked that the hospitals had prominent people who worked with people. People generally like their doctor, didn't like the, but didn't like the system. I mean, all kinds of things. But in the end, J.P. Morgan and Amazon and Berkshire were not going to have any effect on changing that 20%. Now that 20% are only 100 percentage points available and one of the countries spend six or seven percent and perhaps use our system to their advantage, which is also very true. You know, that is an enormous percentage of an economy and we simply, it was too entrenched. uh we do much in the way of change and uh we spent some money on it and we did some work and we learned a good bit about our own systems and we saw the degree to which the system was ingrained in so many people's you know whether the health care providers or whether everybody and these aren't evil people i mean they're just they're just going about something and trying to to trying to save lives but but we found that whether it was in Canada or France or Britain or whatever it might be and if you looked at our costs that they were just far higher and there some extent we were subsidizing the rest of the world and people would come to the United States to do the really unusual challenging aspects of health in terms of operations that sort of thing. But we made no progress. And governments, you know, I mean, it's so involved in the situation and health is so important to most with, to everybody. And we, as I said to Jamie and Jeff, I said, well, the tapeworm won. And problems of society, when you get 20% percent of your GDP going into a given industry, the theory of enthusiasm for changing that industry, the political power that the industry will have. And that doesn't mean they're evil. It's, and, you know, everybody, they just end up there. And so I don't know the, we came to the conclusion. We didn't know the answer three of us. And we had the money to do it. It's No, 130 million people felt about their doctor, felt about their health care, what they felt entitled to, and it's, you know, it's, it won't change by itself. And, uh, it's the only one that can change it. And the only people in government that can change it are getting a majority of 435 people and 100 people. And, and my dad lost one election in his life in 1940. and he he was very strong Republican and in 1950 he went back and beat the guy that beat him”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Morning Session - 2025 Meeting

“associate with. And, uh, and that's, that's something you learn. And, of course, you've learned and of course, you've learned it late in life and that, uh, you appreciate how important some of those factors are until you get much older. But when you've got people around you, like Tom Murphy and, and, like, well, like, well, like, he's his name of Sandy Goddisfund, that, uh, Walter Scott, but you're just going to live a better life than you do if you just go out and look at somebody just making a lot of money and decide you're going to try and copy them or something of the sort. So I would, I would try to be associated with smart people too where I could learn a lot from them and I would try to look for something that I would do if I didn't need the money. I mean, what you're really looking for life is something where you've got a job that you'd hold if you didn't need the money. And I've had that shortly had it for a very, very long time. In fact, all the fellows I named had it. And they also, every one of those ones I named, they always did more than their share. And they never sought more than their share of the credit. They just behaved as the way you'd like anybody you work with. And when you find them, you treasured. German, and when you don't find them, you still keep doing whatever causes you'd eat or enables you to eat, but you don't give up on looking around. And you will find, you'll find people do wonderful things for you. I mentioned, I mentioned earlier, you know, going down to Geico and knocking on the door when the door was locked. I mean, who knows what was behind that door? I went in 10 minutes I found that I had a man that just wonderfully helpful to me. And of course, if somebody's going to be helpful with you, you want to try to figure out ways to be helpful to them. So you get a compounding of good intentions and good behavior. And unfortunately, you can get the reverse of that in life, too. And, you know, with a lot of—I was lucky in having a good environment for living that kind of a life. And other people, you know, have a whole different environmental situation. They have to overcome it. But don't feel guilty about your good luck if you've got, you know, if you've got, well, if you live in the United States, you know, you've, you've, you've, if there are 8 billion people in the world and there's 330 million in the United States, you've already won the game.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Morning Session - 2025 Meeting

“to a great degree and then just keep making the most of it. But you don't want to, don't want to associate with people or enterprises that ask you to do something that or tell you to do something that you shouldn't be doing. And that's one of the problems. I mean, different professions select for different types of people. And, uh, there's, it's interesting to me that in the investment business, so many people get out of it after they've made a pile of money, that, uh, really want something that you'll stick around for, you know, whether you need the money, Craig doesn't need the money, and she doesn't need the money, uh, remotely. They enjoy what they do, and they're so damn good. It's, uh, it's, you know, it's, uh, you know, it just, well, I've had it just, well, I've had it just. out of the advantage of seeing how that works over time. They're the best manager I ever knew, and there's a lot of contention for who that would be. But actually was Tom Murphy, senior, that, uh, who lived the almost 98. And, uh, I've never seen anybody that could get the potential out of other people, uh, more than Murph could. I mean, if, if, if, if you wanted to the, If you wanted to become a better person, you want to work for Tom Murphy. And, uh, there are all kinds of successful people that, that really don't have that sort of, don't bring that to the party. And, and I'm not saying that's the only way to succeed, but I think it's, I think it's the most pleasant way to succeed for sure. And, uh, and I think that fragrance is pretty dramatic, I mean, to operate with Sandy Goddessman from 163 until he died a couple years ago. And Walter Scott, but 30 years and Graydon operated with him for 25 years or so. Right, yeah, 30? Yeah, 30. Yeah, and you really can't miss. It, you know, you'll learn all the time, but you'll not only learn how to be successful in business. You'll learn how to be successful at life. at life. And, uh, uh, so that's, that's, uh, my recommendation and, uh, and, uh, for some reason, I, apparently you live longer too, because it's pretty amazing. I mean, these people I'm talking about, including myself, I mean, I mean, you know, I like to attribute it to this and a few other things, but. happy person was longer than somebody that's doing some things that they don't really admire that much in life.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Afternoon Session - 2025 Meeting

“in 1948 and he got the doctors behind him. And he did very, you know, well, and they believe 100% of what they're doing. They're helping people every day. And during the pandemic, the sacrifices made by people, save other people just incredible. Can you imagine? and working in something where they're bringing in people who are going to die by the dozens and dozens and dozens and you try to somehow keep your own morale up and keep working with them. So you can't argue about the importance of it. The costs are so different than any country in the world that it's a, it is just, it's a huge element. And we're a very rich country so we can do other things other countries can't do. And through our elected representatives and a whole variety of things over time, we've developed a system that is enormously resistant, any kind of major change and it's important in every community that it's in. So I wish we had an answer for you, but I was somewhat pessimistic going in and I was a little more pessimistic when we came out, but I'm glad we did what we did. And we learned something about our own. failings in the process. So Berkshire, in effect, got its money's worth, but we didn't kill the tapeworm. Okay. Trying to change things in government is, it's an interesting proposition in the country because you get self-selection in terms of the people that go into government and continue in it. And to some extent, they keep, they have to make decisions that they don't like. as they go along and they learn to accept them or to rationalize them or whatever it may be. But it's still about, you know, this country's worked out better than any country in the world. So it, you can't argue it was a failure, but you can't argue it's a failure, but you can't argue that there is, that there are certain problems that are terribly tough to figure out ways to solve. And of course, one of them gets back to the the fiscal problem I mentioned before because it's easy to spend money and it's hard to cut people's receipts and if you get elected, you're going to say to yourself, well, I can do more good if I stay and then if I really vote my conscience on this sort of thing. So you give away a little bit here and a little bit there and a little bit there. And finally, you don't recognize yourself in the mirror anymore. And that's, I grew up in a political family, but, but, but, and I watched, I watched”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Afternoon Session - 2025 Meeting

“how people behaved and, and they behaved like human beings, which is what you have to expect. And I behave like human beings, so, uh, still managed to keep moving forward in a dramatic way. It's so much better to live here than it was 100 years ago or 200 years ago. It's dramatic. So you can't say the system's a failure, but you can say that it is very difficult to make major changes in it.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Morning Session - 2025 Meeting

“Well, then, I can give you a good answer to the second part, which is no. And the, but 10 billion would have done that much, you know. That's the other side. Another side of it. What has happened in the last 30, 45 days, 100 days, whatever you want to pick up, whatever this period has been, it's really nothing. There's been three times since we acquired Berkshire, that Berkshire has gone down 50% in a very short period of time. three different times. Nothing was fundamentally wrong with the company at any time, but, but this is not a huge move. The Dow Jones average at 381 in September of 1929. It got down to 42. So that's by going from 100 to 11. This is not been a dramatic. This is not been a dramatic bear marketer anything of the sort. I mean, it's, you know, like, pointed out if I've had 50 trading days a day, you know, for 20 years, I've been old enough to trade stocks, I've got 17 or 18,000 days. There's been plenty of periods that just are dramatically different than this. When the day I was born, the Dow Jones was at 240. And my first, that was August 30th, 1930, and between that and the law, it went from 240 to 41. I mean, that's, so, if people think that it made a really major change, it didn't, if it had gone up 15% instead of down 15% people think they take that with remarkable grace. But if it makes a difference to you, whether you're saying, stocks are down 15% or not, you need to get a somewhat different investment philosophy, because the world is not going to adapt to you. You're going to have to adapt to the world, and you will see a period in the next, certainly in the next 20 years, you'll see a period that will be in, what somebody in the market described one time as a hair curler compared to anything you've seen before. I mean, That's just, it just happens periodically. The world makes big, big, big mistakes and surprises happen in dramatic ways. And the more sophisticated the system gets, the more the surprises can be out of right field.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Afternoon Session - 2025 Meeting

“Well, that's a good question. I see what we call him Mr. Apple, even. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. You'll take it. It's a lot tougher to be an operator. I mean, it is, it's easier to sit in a room like I do and play around with money. It's just an easier life. That doesn't mean it's a more admirable life. It doesn't, but it's been actually been a pleasant life for me, so I don't complain at the least. And I've been able to choose my friends. which has made an enormous difference in my life. I've never had to work for anybody that I really didn't admire. I mean, that's a luxury in life. And five different people I worked for. And, you know, I just, they were fantastic, whether it was the manager of the local pennies, which is located, well, it used to be located a couple of miles from here. and newspaper managers, everything, they have never been really disappointed by any teacher I've had. So I would have to admit that I have been able to choose what I do with my day, an extraordinary degree, compared to a business operator. And in many cases, I'd like to compete, be a top-notch-notch business. operator in terms of some of the, some of the behavior that would might be forced upon me. I am the master, I mean, I've found myself in this position where I can, I can run the kind of company I want to run, and that's an extraordinary luxury. And with that, I should say that I'm getting a section that says five-minute warning exclamation point, five-minute warning, exclamation point.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Morning Session - 2025 Meeting

“That's just part of the stock market. And that's what makes it a good place to focus your efforts if you've got the proper temperament for it and a terrible place to get involved if you get frightened by markets that decline and get excited when stock markets go up. I don't mean to sound particularly critical. I mean, I know people have emotions, but you've got to check them at the door when you invest.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Afternoon Session - 2025 Meeting

“So I would now like to turn to a subject that I want to discuss with you a few minutes, and then when I'm through discussing this, Becky asked me a question or two, which may want, you may want some of our questions that come to you as I make these comments. Tomorrow we're having a board meeting of Berkshire. and we have 11 directors, two of the directors, who are my children. Howie and Susie know of what I'm going to talk about there. The rest of them, this will come as news too. But I think it's the time has arrived. Greg should become the chief executive officer of the company at year end. And I want to spring that on the directors effectively and give that, it's my recommendation. Let them have the time to think about what questions or what structures or anything they go on. And then the meeting following that a few months will take action. The view of the 11 directors. I think they'll be unanimously in favor of it. And that would mean that at year-end, Greg, would be the chief executive or officer of, I would still around and could conceive it would be useful in a few cases. But the final word would be what Greg said in operations, in capital appointment, whatever it might be. I could be helpful, I believe, in that in certain respects, if we ran into periods of great opportunity or anything. I think that for reputation that when there's times of trouble for the government, that we are an asset and not a liability, which is a position that's a position that's hard to have, because usually the government, and then government. get very negative on business if there's a time like that. But so I think I could, there might be a time when I'll, I'd be helpful, but it would have the tickets. And, and he would make, like I said, whether it's acquisitions, I think the board would be more welcome, being him more authority on large acquisitions, probably if they knew it was around, chief executive, period. And, like I say, the plan is to direct doesn't know anything about this until what he's hearing right now. But that, the board will be able to ask me questions tomorrow, as then a little more of the specifics of what they should be thinking and all about. But they'll digest it, and then at the next board meeting after that, if we, we, we'll digest it. as I would guess we would if they act then obviously we we have something to announce to the world as a material change in Perkshire and operation and with a Ouija board or”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Morning Session - 2025 Meeting

“Well, everybody gets setbacks and some people have particularly bad luck in that respect when others get through with barely minors. But Charlie, you know, he had setbacks, I had setbacks. I had setbacks. I mean, it's part of life and they're not any fun. I don't have any great advice for you about, you know, having time of your life while you're having some major setback, but it's, you know, it comes with lifetime. You know, you certainly have a setback when you're having a setback. you die. So everybody's got that such big guarantee to them. But some people get, and I mean, it isn't a laughing matter in a sense because, I mean, people get extraordinary bad luck and other people get extraordinary good luck. Usually the people who get good luck don't really think it was so much luck as themselves. But you're just going to have it, I think. You're just going to have it, I you're going to, I think that you're less likely to have it in terms of medical problems, in terms of, you know, various things in life. I mean, you were born at a good time. I mean, if you look all the way for the history of China, when would you rather have been born, you know, 100 years ago, 500 years ago, 1,000 years ago, or now? You know, it's just hands down. You'd be lucky. I mean, you know, if I came from 20 generations of shepherds, I think I get kind of tired of my life's just looking at these sheep every day. But, you know, we can sit here and I can watch Nebraska not quite play the same game of football that we played 20 years ago. But, I mean, everything in life has been made so much better. that you've got to figure that you do a lucky straw by, you know, staying in the womb for”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Afternoon Session - 2025 Meeting

“whatever and that comes out in terms of doing things but but it will not I have no intention zero of selling one share of Berkshire a Berkshire half the way it'll get given away Gradually, it just won't. I would, okay, drink a Coke and calm down. I would say that I would add this. The decision to keep every share is an economic decision, because I think the prospects are sure will be better under great advantage of mine. And then, uh, uh, I will, I will come in. I will come in and there may come a time when we get a chance to invest a lot of money. And at that time comes, I think it may be helpful with the board, the fact that they know I've got all my money in the company and that I think it's smart. I've seen what Gregor's done. And so that's the news hook for the day, follow. And thanks for coming.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Morning Session - 2025 Meeting

“a couple hundred thousand years and then just emerging it at the right time. So I would always, I would focus on the things that have been good in your life rather than than the bad things that happened, because bad things do happen. But, but it's, it's, it can often be a wonderful life, you could get terrible breaks in it. I mean, you know, it, so far that really hasn't happened with me, but it's happened with some of my friends. But you get some bad breaks from time to time. For 94 years, I've been able to drink whatever I want to drink and, you know, and they predict all kinds of terrible things for me, but it has happened yet, so. It's true. I mean, if you look at what pro football players are making now and everything compared to what they were making 30 or 40 years ago, you can say, well, isn't that wonderful? But if you look at the, if you look at the lifespan of professional athletes, after a while, you get used to, you really decide that you're better off if you, if you really weren't the first one chosen to be on the baseball team or the basketball team or the basketball team or anything. else the human body and i think i speak for the others to some extent that we never didn't we never really exercised that much or did anything we were carefully preserving ourselves for the so look at the bright side of things to the extent that you can and that and that uh and you know you're lucky enough to you're here today you're healthy you're healthy you're You've come from a long distance and you're getting a chance to learn more about something that interests you and compare that with the situation a couple hundred years ago that you would have been off. So anyway, that's enough moralizing. Okay, Becky.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Morning Session - 2025 Meeting

“Yeah, we expect change in all our businesses and good thing we did. Charlie pushed me into it, but if I'd settled for being in New England textiles, you know, and even though it worked well for 70 years or so prior there too, you know, the world changes and and if the game didn't change it all really would be very interesting, you know. If every time you, if you ever, every time you, you know, swung in a baseball, you had a home run the game wouldn't be interesting. If every time you hit a golf, a golf ball, you had a hole and it wouldn't be interesting. So, and the fact that there will be things you have to think about all the time as you go along and you'll make mistakes and all that. And that's really part of the fun. I mean, your brain would turn to mush if you didn't have a few problems now of that. So, I, I, uh, pro-insurance will change, although it's remarkable, how little it has changed. But it's only been around since, you know, for a relatively small time, and who knows what we're doing to move in transportation a hundred years from now. If you go back a couple hundred years ago, who could have predicted the United States would look like what it does, and people would move like they do, and people would enjoy themselves like they do. I mean, it's just, it's a dynamic world, and the biggest thing we have to worry about, unfortunately, is that we've learned how to destroy the world, too, in recent years. And so we've got this wonderful world, which now we know that there are eight countries that probably a ninth coming on to destroy and, and we don't have what I would consider the necessarily the perfect people leading each of one of the nine, or some of the nine countries. And, you know, Einstein came up with the equals MC squared back in 1905.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Morning Session - 2025 Meeting

“When I walked into Geigo's office is in 1950, the average price of a policy was around 40 bucks a year. It varies all over the lots of depending on location, everything, but you to get up to $2,000 and depending on how urban your areas are and everything, you can get considerably higher. During that same time, the number of people killed in auto accidents falling from roughly six per 100 million miles to rather than this over one. So the car's become incredibly safer, and it costs 50 times as much. down or they're about to buy insurance policies. So people talk about the developments and car driving and all that sort of thing. It's a lot easier sometimes. I mean, the Buck Rogers aspect of it people look at, but they don't actually think of what really happens to the math of the business. The insurance, auto insurance industry has been a huge growth industry. And for that matter, owners, insurance insurance. prices in Nebraska have doubled in the last 10 years, adjusted for general inflation, and invective storms, you know, have just gone on a terror, and it's still unprofitable, but right of home homeowner's insurance in Nebraska after doubling the price in the last 10 years. So it's very hard to predict what these big changes mean, and you just have to keep thinking all the time, but you don't want to read some research report.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Morning Session - 2025 Meeting

“where it says the world's coming to an end or the world's going to be wonderful because of this or that because there's about 50 other developments going on at the same time that you need to think about and that you needed to keep observing as you go along. You don't, you never reach an answer in this business. You reach a point of action that you take, but but we try to get into as high probability things as we think we think we can do in play the game in the same way. But it will be different than you think. And you should wake up every morning and think about that too if you're in the business of managing businesses.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Morning Session - 2025 Meeting

“Oh, yeah. Yeah, let's put up the, we released our 10 Q this morning and we tried to do it on a Saturday. They said nobody gets a jump on other people. And we just have three simple chart. You'll see that our insurance underwriting income was down dramatically for the first quarter. And last year was as good a year as you'll see in insurance. And it's always unpredictable insurance, but everything broke our way or the insurance industry's way last year. prices are down this year, risks are up this year. So you don't have to be a genius to figure out what the answer is on that. So, uh, but we have, we do have unusual advantages in the insurance business. Uh, it can't really be replicated by our competition. That doesn't mean they aren't trying to get advantages we don't have that. We'll try to replicate anything that seems better. In fact, we'll try and chop it. But we, I wouldn't talk about our insurance business as much as I do with, unless I really thought we had some really permanent advantages in a very, very large industry. We just announced within the last 24 hours that we in Zurich and Chubb have arranged a joint operation to be the writer of a really large sums. Very few people can do. And of course, we've got to write about the right price in terms of liability. But we can do that sort of thing without blinking. And anybody that wants to do it wants to get us in it. I mean, that, uh, so anyway, our investment income did not change that much because we have a float that grows a little bit, which gives us more money for investment, and then we have retained earnings, which grows. So we would expect in an energy. a year to have like $40 billion or more that will build up investments unless we find”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Morning Session - 2025 Meeting

“things to do with it. So the investment income rates on treasuries are less than they were, or short-term bills, I should say, are less than they were before. So you had that negative effect pulling it down, but not that much, and we had more money. So we came up with a little more in the way of earnings. The railroad is earning a little more than last year. but it's not earning, but it should be earning at the present time, but that's solvable and is getting getting solved. And it's still an incredible asset for Berkshire. The energy company last year was having particular problems, and those are absent this year, so those earnings are up. And then among our range of general businesses, they're were pretty much a push. And I think you did a little calculation the other day on how many were up and how many were down to that, Greg.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Morning Session - 2025 Meeting

“Yeah. The next slide. I'm getting a five-minute warning here. And the, uh, we'll throw the long ball now, the, uh, the, uh, shows our financial condition, which continues to a lot more in cash, treasury bills than I would like. But I, but I, but simply a question, opportunities occur. And if you get real opportunities every five or six years, you're, you know, you have to be patient. Charlie always pointed out that we may most of them. of our money. I'm about about eight or nine ideas over 50 years. And we talked about it every day and we read every report and we did everything else. But if you think you can get an idea a day from listening to your friend of your book or doing a lot of reading of the financial information published or because every now and then you get extraordinary opportunities. And most of the time, much of an edge. So we also have on that thing, our float, which continues to build. I don't think any kind, there's no company that has, property casualty company that has our float is there, a Jeep?”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Morning Session - 2025 Meeting

“Yeah. So that is money that long as we're riding it and underwriting profit is absolutely free money. And expect that over a 50 year, 100 year pre-year pre-year pre-period. that we would be able to say the same thing. But there will be, there will be years when you have record and it'll lead into the flow earnings. But so far in the last 20 years,”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-05-05

Morning Session - 2025 Meeting

“And then the final page is on share repurchases, and clearly we haven't made any. We have not made share repurchases so far this year. And repurchases, if it sure buys Berkshire shares and repurchases, we've now pay more than you will pay if you buy Berkshire shares. I don't think people generally know that, but there is a... a tax that was introduced a year or so ago, where we pay 1%, and that only hurts us, because we pay more for it than you to pay. It's a better deal for you than for us. But it actually hurts some of our investing companies quite substantially. Tim Cook has done a wonderful job. I mean, really wonderful job running the Apple, but He spent $100 billion roughly in a year repurchasing shares, and there's a 1% charge attached now, so that's a billion dollars a year that he pays when he buys when he buys apple stock in, which we like, compared to what you pay, and it doesn't sound like much, but well, a billion dollars sounds like a lot still, no matter. But there are people that want to increase that particular rate. right dramatically and we won't read about it or anything like that, but it does make it's slightly less attractive, was before, and we will only in our shares if we think that they are underpriced as valued very conservatively, and we get that opportunity occasionally. But the higher that charge goes that the federal government charges is for doing it, the less we will be able to do a re-purchases. So on that happy note, we will rejoin at 1 o'clock and we will, I'm sorry, I'd like that to 11 o'clock, and then we will. Yeah, 11 o'clock. And then we'll continue to 1 o'clock. And in the meantime, enjoy yourself. And I think all our stores are still open, so bring the cash register. Thank you.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-01-08

RARE Charlie Munger 2017 Daily Journal AFTER Interview

“Well, you can't. We don't have one way of doing it. We have certain things we avoid because we don't think we have the competency to deal with them. And we have certain things we kind of like because we're used to them. And so we don't have just one set of rules. We don't have any formulas that are exact or anything like that. And some of the stuff we do, we just know it's a little better than our alternatives. We're doing all kinds of stuff now that we would not have done. We're ample stock in the old days.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-01-08

RARE Charlie Munger 2017 Daily Journal AFTER Interview

“He seemed like very straightforward. But you say I get them. million letters from people who want to go to work with Berkshire or want to come work. I sometimes get a check. They'll send me here's $50,000. I'll pay this to work for you. I said I send the $50,000 back. I will say that it's kind of a brash thing to do and I kind of admire it because it's kind of a smart ass done. Something was smart ass when I was young myself. But I'm looking for another starting helper or something. I'm playing out the end game. I'm playing out the end game. Anybody who's playing anything else with an end game when they're 93 is crazy. It's an end game. Charlie, can you...”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-01-08

RARE Charlie Munger 2017 Daily Journal AFTER Interview

“No, I... everything about because I don't... McKenzie. That's a killing game out of McKenzie. There are a lot of manipulative types of McKinsey. So is it just simply an observation of the people more so than the quantitative factors? You don't need to look at the balance sheet when you're... looking at the person. Well, I could see the chain letter aspects of the game. Okay. And the huge leverage and the huge...”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-01-08

RARE Charlie Munger 2017 Daily Journal AFTER Interview

“I wouldn't do that. Have you seen these boycotts? I don't like all that. I... Basically, I'm not in favor. of young people agitating them and trying to change the whole world. I think they know so much. I think young people should learn more and shout less. So I'm not sympathy for anybody. Young people are out in the streets agitating. And I say, that's not my system. I think if you've got Hitler or something, you can go out and agitate. But short of that, I think the young people ought to learn more and shout less.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-01-08

RARE Charlie Munger 2017 Daily Journal AFTER Interview

“I don't know. I think the chances are pretty good. It's going to be quite sticky. And that's why we bought it. But, as I say, we may have a slight edge in our favor there. But it's not a big edge. We're doing that because we don't find the stuff we used to find where we knew we couldn't lose. Apple, we've merely got, we think it's a little edge. We don't have a big insight that can't fail. But if you can't find, if you got the money, you have to put it somewhere. And you can't find what you used to like. You have to put it with what's best available. It's a nice problem to have, to have so much money. We shouldn't really be complaining about it. It got harder. The reason it got harder is we got so much money. When we bought that Coca-Cola, it was a million shares. It took us eight months to buy a million shares. We were buying like half of the whole trading every day. It's hard to get into all of these big blocks.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-01-08

RARE Charlie Munger 2017 Daily Journal AFTER Interview

“No. You know, I just, maybe I've met him once or something. I think, I basically think he's right about his basic approach. The other people are not going to match the averages, and he is, and he's, and his idea has succeeded, and he's succeeded, and he was right. On the end, he's kind of a one-trick pony. I don't think he has another. He had one good idea in his lifetime. He wrote it very hard. That's all you need. That's an interesting example. He had one good idea. He pushed it hard, didn't work. You don't need all good ideas, but you do need one.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-01-08

RARE Charlie Munger 2017 Daily Journal AFTER Interview

“For the first hundred years, all that caffeinated, carbonated sugar water with the same flavor. same flavor just swept the earth. Every year more money came in. They were drowning in money, for the better part of 100 years. Of course, it was interesting. But of course, that kind of spoils you. And now, the basic stuff is going the other way.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-01-08

RARE Charlie Munger 2017 Daily Journal AFTER Interview

“Well, I wouldn't do that because I did that only retrospectively. In other words, I knew the outcome when I created the story. Of course, that's a lot easier than starting now and projecting the future. So I can explain the past a lot better than I can predict the future. Surprise, surprise. And... And by the way, that talk, it was a total failure when I gave it. It's been a total failure ever since. I think it's absolutely right, and there's a lot of me learned in it.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-01-08

RARE Charlie Munger 2017 Daily Journal AFTER Interview

“Well, there's a lot of good left in the American economy and American people. Partly because we're taking in so many talented people from these other nations think we've taken in from China, India, even Japan. It's a lot of human talent. And in the old days, we got the poor people, you know, and that was harder because, and now the Chinese have come here, they're not the poor Chinese. They're not the poor Chinese. They're the well-to-do Chinese. And the children of successful Chinese families that get high grades and so forth. The same from India. Every once in a while I meet Untouchable, who has just gotten out through the Maintainmental Institute of India and succeeded. But most of the Indians I made are all from the overcasts of India. We're sucking the brains out of India. And of course, that's good for us. Same with China. Same with China.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-01-08

RARE Charlie Munger 2017 Daily Journal AFTER Interview

“Well, I do know this. If you run a business where people have to trust your food, you just can't afford to have a scandal in food quality. Costco just sweats blood to avoid. Now everyone wants to know a few cases of some, you know, some fairly minor. Nobody gets away with it. But we just are financial. about preventing it and stepping out hard when it happens and so forth. And they got careless at that in, you know, the fried chicken company in China. Long, young, young brand. And of course, it hurt them terribly. You can't afford to have a scandal if you're selling food. And when the people adulterated the baby formula in China, China killed the people that did that. They're dead, and they didn't take a long time doing it. No, a lot of appeals or anything. anything. Kill our babies to make a little more money. You never will be missed. I have a little list off they went to the Great Beyond.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-01-08

RARE Charlie Munger 2017 Daily Journal AFTER Interview

“I have the general impression based on 60 years of experience in the neighborhood. The movie business is a tough business. Now, a lot of people have done well at it. But I don't know how to do it. to create a Star Wars. I don't know how to sell it for a price like that. I want to let somebody else make money in those difficult ways. It's, I regard the movie business as a tough business. Now, if it's your only way up and you're good at it, because you have to do it. But I don't even think about those things I'm not good at. I don't. Take Netflix. Who did House of Cards? Kevin Spitz. Oh, I'm a producer, though. Oh. The guy gave him the money. Reed Hastings. Netflix did. But HBO turned it down. And that was really stupid. It worked in England.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-01-08

RARE Charlie Munger 2017 Daily Journal AFTER Interview

“Well, did you know Sol Price, the founder of... Very well. Very good guy. Cranky, but very, very good human being. be honorable, very honorable. What he liked about Costco, he thought it was such an honorable way to make money. Try to make the stuff you're selling very good and very cheap for the people who bought it. And he was right, it was honorable. And it was, he did it very well. So, I like he was very good.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-01-08

RARE Charlie Munger 2017 Daily Journal AFTER Interview

“Well, I don't know that much about it, but I do know that it's more concentrated now, and there's no real substitute for it. It isn't like that. We have a substitute for air travel. And it's down to a relatively few players. In the old days, they can always start a new airline. They are nothing but young people. They pay the pilots less. They don't have a union. And they could just start hitting the prices. They just kept ruining the business over and over again. And even now, Southwest is just starting to go to Hawaii. So the vicious competition is continuing, including people doing it for government. own these airlines and do it to show off how strong they are. So I don't regard it as a perfect model, and I don't think it's the greatest idea we ever had. It's just something that, considering how pounded they were and how the world has changed a little. We thought, as I say, we had a little advantage by that particular gamble, but it is not that we,”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-01-08conf:medium

RARE Charlie Munger 2017 Daily Journal AFTER Interview

“I don't think oil prices will make that much difference over the the long term to the it's not that if the kerosene doubles in price I don't think over time I don't get matters that much to the airlines it's still it's it's it's you put hundred people in an airliner and fly somewhere it's pretty efficient and you can do a lot of flights per day and it's worth a lot of money you will take the trip and not going to be a new airport in Shanghai you know a lot of the airports are fixed and a lot of of them or how the capacity it is it's obviously better than it was in the past whether it's good enough so it will do well I don't know also if it starts working you get paid in advance for the tickets so there's no credit a lot of you'll lease the airliners so you make money you can pile up pretty rapidly in cash is there recent JetBlue wasn't in there I don't know anything about individual airlines neither is we bought a bunch I know it was it was a sector bed it's not about on an individual airline when industries like airlines or railroads rationalize and turn around how do you and Warren know I mean we don't know it was easy to say it in the railroad was all over and then we went in and the airlines it's not over but it's a it's a little bit the same story years of consolidation and bankruptcies three four five six big or so already in the airlines so for 50 years you've continually read about these industries even though you have disdain for them yes I talked about patients I I read Barron's for 50 years in 50 years I found one investment opportunity in Barron's other which I made about 80 million dollars with almost no risk I took the 80 million dollars and gave it to Lee Lou who turned it into four or five hundred million dollars so I have made four or five hundred million dollars out of reading Barins for 50 years and following me an idea now that doesn't help you very much does it I'm sorry but that's the way it really happened if you can't do it I I I didn't have a lot of ideas I didn't find them that easily but I didn't pounce on one which one was that which idea was that it was a little automotive supply company anyway it was a it was a cigar buck Is that K&W? No. No, no, this was, I forgot in the name of it. But it was a little, it was the Monroe shock absorber and all that stuff.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-01-08

RARE Charlie Munger 2017 Daily Journal AFTER Interview

“The stock was a dollar and the junk bonds was paid 11.3% were 35. And when I bought the junk bonds, they paid me to 35%, they went right to 107 when they called. You know, it was, and then the stock went from 1 to 40, but of course I sold my stock at 15. But what did the article in Barron say? It said it was a cheap stock. But that's a very funny way to be to watch for 50 years and act once.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-01-08

RARE Charlie Munger 2017 Daily Journal AFTER Interview

“Well, I kind of knew, based on experience, how sticky some of that. Auto secondary market was, and how many old cars needed, Monroe, shocky absorbers. And I just knew it was too, it was too cheap. I didn't know it would work for sure, but I know that I knew that, I just, as I say, people were afraid it was going to go broke, obviously, if their bonds were selling at 35.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-01-08

RARE Charlie Munger 2017 Daily Journal AFTER Interview

“Well, each person's is its own, but it really helps to know what you can do and what you can't. I got whole things. I don't like to gamble against odds. I have not lost a thousand dollars in my life, betting against racetracks, casinos. The odds are against me. I just don't play. I don't even want to amuse myself playing against the odds. Now I have occasionally played bridge against better players where I'm really playing for the instruction which I can afford. But that's because I like the learning. But I don't do very much even though. I do not like playing against the odds.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-01-08

RARE Charlie Munger 2017 Daily Journal AFTER Interview

“Well, I did all kinds of things in those days. First place, in those days we had what were called Jewish Treasury bills. And that was event arbitrage. If a company sells out $100 a share in the stock selling at 95, for 60 years, people who just went in and bought the stock at 95 and made the 20% per annum with a little leverage. For 60 years, Graham Newman, Warren, I, and Goldman Sachs,”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-01-08

RARE Charlie Munger 2017 Daily Journal AFTER Interview

“made 20% per year on anything we did in the band arbitrage. What happened was when the stockbrokers were all on commission, the deals announced, every stockbroker can call his clients, oh, your stock is way up, maybe you should sell that, you know, they're getting any commission. So you had dumb selling. And so, of course we did well. Nowadays, the people do not do all that well in event arbitrage. It's too tough, the deals are, it's just too crowded, but it just worked for. but it just worked fine for all those years. We had all kinds of things in those days we can't do anymore. I was speaking with Rick Yurin, and he was saying that if he was to start a fund today, he wouldn't do it. And he says he doesn't think it's hard because the size of a fund like Berkshire limits you to large companies. He just doesn't think that there's the same opportunities anywhere. There aren't. That's why people come to this meeting. Speaking of opportunities, Charlie, could you talk a little bit about your thoughts on John Malone as an operating. as an operator and what you think about the cable industry's moat going forward?”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-01-08

RARE Charlie Munger 2017 Daily Journal AFTER Interview

“You have all these dealer protection laws. It's entrenched. We take the real estate, it tends to be very good and stick it in our insurance companies where it's a decent insurance asset. It's what I call okay. So that's great then. great? No, it's not great. It's okay. If it's okay to you, it must be pretty great. No, it's not pretty good to me. It's not pretty good to me. It's okay. I would prefer doing it to not doing it, but nothing, it's nothing exciting about buying a bunch of auto dealers. Also, if you got $90 billion a float, you know, the idea of buying a bunch of auto dealerships that dominate. it's okay.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-01-08

RARE Charlie Munger 2017 Daily Journal AFTER Interview

“Well, cloning is, of course, a very, it's not an ambiguous word, word, when you use it biologically. But when you take it into some other field, cloning is a very interesting idea. You do remove ideas from one place and bring them into another. If that's cloning, I do it all the time. Charlie, can you take us... I like cloning. Can you take us back when you bought the Buffalo News paper?”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-01-08

RARE Charlie Munger 2017 Daily Journal AFTER Interview

“It's a very plausible idea. I have encouraged one young man to look at it. So I can hardly say that. I can hardly say that it has no merit. Of course, it's useful if I were you people, to look at what other people you regard as great investors are doing for ideas. The trouble with it is that if you pick people as late in the game as Berkshire Hathaway, buying our limitations caused by size. You really need to do it from some guy that's operating in smaller places and finding places with more advantage. And of course, it's hard to do it. identify the people in the small game. But it's not an idea that won't work. If I were you people, of course, I would do that.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-01-08

RARE Charlie Munger 2017 Daily Journal AFTER Interview

“Well, I think the wholly owned businesses will because we won't do any taxes on selling. And I think they will continue to grow and I think they'll do better. I think the Berkshire, the wholly owned businesses of Berkshire are the 80% of ownership. percent of them, or what have you, on average, better than the businesses, say, the S&P. So I think we'll do better in that part than the S&P. And I don't think our stocks located in a corporation subject to taxation will do enough better than the A&P to even pay the taxes. But if we're buying the stocks with the float and some insurance company, of course, the change, there were changes. But, no, I would say that, of course, the... Of course, if you buy Berkser, you should not be buying the strength of its little insuring its portfolio. Look, we get $8 billion, it's the biggest market cap in the country. It's a considerable period, get $8 billion into it. And it's not that big a deal with a $400 billion market cap. And it's not that... It was easier to get into it out than other things. No, I... People who buy Burkshire. When you went Berkshire back 30 or 40 years ago, you were getting a bunch of marketable securities in the discount and all the businesses were free. And of course those people made a lot of money. We outperform the market by miles in those days, and the businesses did well. And now we've got businesses that are averaging out doing well, and our marketable securities are a small percentage of our... There were years when we had more marketable securities per share than our book value for share. Now it's quite different. And of course, the marketable. that's Crescent Mobile, it's a different world. The one thing about Berkshire that's interesting is we do get some opportunities people, other people don't get. If you're 3G and want a partner for your next deal, who are you going to come to? We know we're, they know we're a good partner. So we see stuff other people don't see. That helps. Sorry.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-01-08

RARE Charlie Munger 2017 Daily Journal AFTER Interview

“Take the Nebraska Furniture Market, owned by the parts of the Blumkin, and we didn't want to sell them. They love the business, they're very rich, they have an enormous portfolio, marketable securities within their, you know, came out of money left in their 20%, because a lot of surplus money they've accumulated it's outside the furniture business, and it's very One says to those people, who he treats kind of like sons, you know, I live in the same community. And he lets them control the dividend policy of the company. It doesn't make much difference to us. The dividends are mostly tax-free. He said, whatever dividend policy, we own 80% of it. So he says to the minority owners, just to choose the dividend policy with the whole company. Whatever you want, it's always doing things like that with the right people. So is Lidu. I tell you a story about Lidu that you will want. General Motors. General Electric was famous for always negotiating out of the wire. And just before they're at close, they'd have one final twist. And of course, it always worked. The other guy was all invested. So everybody feels robbed and cheated and mad. But they get their way. That last final twist, people have him. So, Lee-Lum had a couple of venture capitalists investments with the field. He made this one with this guy. They had made us a lot of money in a previous deal, and we're now going in with them again on another very high Very high-grade guy and very... Now we come to the General Electric moment. He says, I have to make one change in this investment. It sounds just like General Electric, just about to close. I didn't tell you, he did it himself. He said, you know, this is a small amount of money to us. You got your whole net worth in it. I cannot sign this thing if you want, let me put in a clause,”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-01-08

RARE Charlie Munger 2017 Daily Journal AFTER Interview

“They're very tough. Now, it's a great company that was great products and they've got some very good people. I think Jeff M.L. was a good guy, but I would be very uncomfortable doing that. My theory of life is win-win. I want suppliers that trust me and I trust them. And I trust them. don't want to screw the suppliers as hard as I can.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-01-08

RARE Charlie Munger 2017 Daily Journal AFTER Interview

“It would, you could have sold it an afternoon every single asset for four or 500 million. So it was a good business, not just a gram stop, but it was also a gram stock because it was so cheap. And they also had a business that was likely to destroy its competitor, making it a monopoly. Now it was only a tiny little money when they could go in. That's what makes it hard for you people. It's a great investment, but it was a great investment. investment, but maybe it would absorb four or five million dollars. Have you seen an opportunity like that since? Which we did. And by the way, that four or five, I mean, it was ten million. We got ten million into it. At the top it was a billion. And, but we only did that once. So it's a great story, but now that helped us way back to have that extra billion in our dollars. But that wasn't an opportunity that would take billions of dollars. That's why what happens in the past in Berkser can't happen again. that little opportunity for $10 million investment. It was wonderful. But we don't have a lot. If you look at Berkshire, you'd think we'd have 10 investments that are each of them, say 10 times. We put in a billion, and now it's 10 billion, and then we have 100 billion and 10 companies. But we don't. We had three or something. And it's not that damned easy to find these damn things that you can identify. It's not that damn easy. Thank you again. all your continuous sharing. Well, I appreciate it. I'm glad you guys are still having fun doing it then. I'm glad you're not discouraged. You shouldn't be, but you know, everybody who did the value investing in my generation and plugged the way out. You didn't have to be that smart. They all did well. And yours is going to be more difficult. Is there a good... But, you know, you want something to do anyway. That's kind of interesting to do, so the fact that's difficult shouldn't. it's difficult shouldn't discourage you that much. Is there a good systematic approach to learning from one's mistakes, like so you don't repeat them? Is there something that's worked for you in terms of post-mortems? We were active enough so we had some mistakes to remember. It's hard to learn. We learned a lot vicariously, because it's so much cheaper. We also learned a lot from unpleasant experience. And so just doing it. Doing it, you'll, you'll, I mean, they get those mistakes. Nobody can avoid them.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-01-08

RARE Charlie Munger 2017 Daily Journal AFTER Interview

“And of course you'll learn from everyone. Monash is good at post-Morteming, post-mortem, his mistakes. And... What did you say when Dexter's shoes came up? Were you for or against it at the time? Well, I had to look it very hard. The company was loved by all the retailers, was the number one supplier to J.C. Penny. It had surpassed everything. It was a solid earner, a dominated Maine. They were nice people. And of course, the Chinese hadn't come up by that time. They just came up so fast. And they just took no prisoners in the shoe business. And they weren't just cheaper by a little. They were half-priced. And of course, the shoe business is not that easy of business. Of course people bought the half-price shoes. And the business just went to hell very fast. But that business, because it created such a business, because it created such a huge lesson, and it looks awful in terms of what the Berkshire stock is worth. I mean, we're the main charity in Maine, if you call us. But at the time, it was 2% of one year's performance. That's what we lost by having to go to zero. So our return from one year went down by two percentage points. Now to be sure if we bought our own stock instead of this thing, you know, or not giving away our stock. stock it's a huge error. But the, but we learn from us. I just think if you just keep going, you'll make some mistakes and of course you'll learn from. How could you not learn from that one? We've learned how awful it is to have somebody who's really way lower. Price come in, hard, and how no amount of managerial skill could protect us. Now we have other show businesses and little niches that make 20 million a year or something after taxes. taxes. Maybe a little bit of that is left over, Dempster even. But we just, we make do. And, but don't you all have mistakes? Yes. Yeah. That are painful. And haven't you learned from them? Yeah. And isn't that good? Yes. And so, but I don't know what I would do now with it. I know. I live surrounded by capital guardian people. I have over a trillion dollars. And they are all these guys. that gets a business school and they treat them well and they divide them up and they get expertise in various places. It doesn't work to beat the indexes. I knew that company when it was smaller, you know, five or six hundred million, and they beat the indexes by a point a year, you know, which was fine because they were drawing the fees off the top”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-01-08

RARE Charlie Munger 2017 Daily Journal AFTER Interview

“hundreds of millions of dollars and they're paying part of it to Gallagore. Now I go, Al Gore has hundreds of million dollars in your profession. And he's an idiot. And it's an interesting story. And Krillwood. Charlie, earlier you were talking about how. So if you were idiots about global warming, President would push your theory. By the way, it's not the only one. There's an investment. There's a leveraged buyout operator in Los Angeles. Los Angeles that I know cash away. He's made 35% per annum for 30 years. All he buys the service companies. Instead of buying five per, you know, 100% in the management, they have 10. He always tries to buy 60 and let the old manager who created the company own the other 40. And he buys nothing but service companies. And he knows a lot about it. And with that formula, which like, you know, inventories, receivables, are all kinds of horrible things in business. that just by service companies you can avoid. And it's amazing how it's worked for, it worked for this guy with does the LBOs just the way it worked for Algo, or 35% for Rana. And he's smart because he's causing people to have more of their own skin in the game. They know more about it. They're more like partners, you know. The new manager's not an employee. They really, some other guy who was reporting you old, 60, that's a different role. relationship and he's the founder. But what a clever way to do it, and it works better. And of course, he knows more about it when he does nothing to serve his companies. I know another guy does nothing but mail order and internet companies. Also, he's made 20% percent for him for a long, long time. And, but he knows more about getting customers and this racial, and he knows more about these damn mail over and internet companies. He really knows a lot. knows a lot. It's two specialists. Each one of the different specials. Both working. Interesting. And that's why I made it all talk about, the specialization frequently works. I haven't had more fun to go on and do everything, but these specialists do better, average down. They know a lot. So how is our little mail order business Oriental trading doing? And did they give you a... That's one of this guys. This guy sold that. Not to us. but one previous to us. Well, it's a very humdrum, damn business. But it's right there in Omaha. It's a non-event. It may be better than something else we put insurance float into.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-01-08conf:medium

RARE Charlie Munger 2017 Daily Journal AFTER Interview

“But it's not, it's going nowhere. But, you know, if your phone costs you nothing, and you suddenly make 10 to 1% on it, it's a big galling. We've got a float now. Speaking of that, Ahji, there only been two transactions like that in the history of that. like that in the history of the world, 10 billion each. How she does both of them? If you want them to do a lot with the AIG? What? Do you reinsurance of AIG? That's the second one. But where else is AIG going to go for, who would you trust to pay a lot of other stuff 30 years from now, except Berkshire? Nobody. It was nice to be in that position. And we get along with them. Do you still do, in the past, do you do you do a lot of work still for on? of work still with Ron Berkel in the supermarket finance? I have not seen Ron Berkel in 35 years. He always tells people what a great friend he gets to mine. I like Ron Berkel's father. It was our last customer for trading stamps. And I like Ron when he was eager, but Ron, when he's made a lot of money, is a bit insufferable. Yeah, I mean, no, he's my good friend if you listen to him. Because you show up in pretty much every biography of him that's ever written. The one he really knows is Bill Clinton because he furnished him with girls. He's talking about the wrong, his wrong, he's had other friendships that are closer. When you look at what's made you and Warren, and Warren have relatively happy lives. Is there some aspect of that that's imitable for the rest of us?”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2025-01-08

RARE Charlie Munger 2017 Daily Journal AFTER Interview

“Northern Natural Pipelines they needed money Monday and it was like Saturday it was lots of money we came up with the lawyers were having a fit we gave them the money and took the pipeline worked out the details letter and other people can't do that their whole culture is all kinds of bureaucrats that want to something to do. They can't make an exception.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2024-05-06

Morning Session - 2024 Meeting

“Yeah, don't wear out all your clapping on Charlie. I mean, we got, in addition, well, we have, first of all, Greg Abel, the director, and Aegee Jane, sending a stem one's insurance, and moving then to this back of this first section, if each of the directors there would remain standing until we finish, we'll go alphabetically down the line. And we've got Howard Buffett, we have Susan Buffett, Steve Burke, Ken Chen Chenal, Chris Davis, Sue Decker, Charlotte Geimann, Tom Murphy Jr., Ron Olson, Wally Weitz, and Merrill Whitmer. Okay. There are two people I would like to thank, and then we'll get on to the brief description of the results of the first quarter. First of all, I'd like to thank Melissa Shapiro, who put this whole event together. You can't imagine the work that goes into it, but she just reported to me that we set a new record for Seas Candy. I think they brought along six tons, and they will sell out. And one thing I do want to mention, we have only one book at the bookstore of the bookworm this year. Normally we have about 25, but we have poor Charlie's Almanac, fourth edition. And I think we sold about 2,400 of them yesterday. And that will be the only book. Next year, we'll go back to having our usual selection. But we thought we would just turn it over to Charlie this year. And then I would like to introduce one for the person, and that's the person who put that movie together. And you can't imagine the amount of work it is because, for example, on those scenes that we've used from the past, if they involved Hollywood stars or various people, we needed to get permission all over again to show it. because we told them originally we would only show it within the confines of our auditorium here. And of course, it went out on CNBC, and you just can't imagine how much effort, but also the great cooperation we got from all those desperate housewives and Jamie Lee. And with the desperate housewives, we had to get Disney's okay, and that was easy to get. But running down five desperate housewives, that one came in toward the end. But the job of putting this together has been handled by the same fellow that handles us. been doing these for years and years and years and years. And I just would appreciate it if you could just put the spotlight on Brad the Underwood for just a minute. Okay, we put out some results for the first quarter this morning at 7 o'clock our time.”

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Warren BuffettMeeting2024-05-06

2024 Annual Meeting Highlight Reel

“Our cash in Treasury bills were $182 billion at the quarter end. And I think it's a fair assumption that they probably about $200 billion at the end of the end of this quarter. We'd love to spend it, but we won't spend it unless we think we're doing something that has very little risk and can make us a lot of money.”

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