The Annual Shareholder Festival

Annual Shareholders Meetings are often a waste of time. For the price of one share, some attendees pursue a different agenda and turn the meeting into their own theater stage. At the U.S. company Berkshire Hathaway, things are a little different, because Warren Buffett and his long-time partner and Vice Chairman Charlie Munger answer questions for 6 hours every year. This acts like a magnet for like-minded investors. In 1981, only 12 people came to the shareholders' meeting. By 1985, 250 of the 3,000 registered shareholders had attended. And finally, today, there are close to 50,000 people.
 
Warren Buffett has been a controlling shareholder of Berkshire Hathaway since 1965. The price of Berkshire shares has risen by 19.8% per year since then. Calculated for these almost 60 years, that is more than 3.7 million percent growth in the value of the share. Yes, it works, the miracle of compound interest! 

This year the big annual meeting will be held on May 6 in Omaha, Nebraska. I am looking forward to attending again. After 2003 and 2011, 2023 is perfect to span a 20-year bracket of thought. But this year, I will not be doing it for myself alone. No, I will take you, dear readers of the Gutmann Viewpoint newsletter, along for the ride. You can follow the updates from America live via a dedicated link on the Gutmann website (you will receive this with my next newsletter). 

This year, the cover of the guide to the event reads “Annual Shareholders Festival.” Warren Buffett also likes to call it “Woodstock for capitalists” and it does indeed have festival character. There is probably no other place where so many like-minded people come together. Around the Shareholders' Meeting there are many investor meetings, conferences and other gatherings of people who travel from all over the world. I will report on these as well. 

100 years of know-how

Warren Buffett is the most successful investor the world has ever seen. Anyone who wants to learn about investing should hear and read what he has to say at the age of 92. Charlie Munger is no less smart and successful and has even been in this world for 99 years. Young people sometimes feel attracted to self-proclaimed gurus who appear in the various market phases ... and disappear without a sound after a while. Does it not it make more sense to learn from people who have been successful for such a long time?

In 1957, Buffett wrote the first partnership letter to his investors. Comparable to a mutual fund, this partnership generated an annual return of 31.6% per year from 1957 to 1968, or 25.3% for investors (after fees). You can read all of these letters, as well as all of the shareholder letters he wrote for Berkshire Hathaway since 1965. And that's exactly what I'm going to do now, for the umpteenth time. After all, you can never stop learning.