No. of Recommendations: 31
1. I want to go next year. Greg was transparent, fielded about 14 questions without dodging or deflecting, and showed good, impressively detailed command of this immense apparatus. Warren is a legend and has influenced me more than anyone else in my investing career, to the point where people just wait for me to pop out a vignette about him, but he's slowed down, and frankly it was a bit painful to see him work through his part towards the top of the session. This year was an improvement over the last few years.
2. Sharing the stage was a plus. Ajit gave some interesting color commentary from his unique and very learned body of knowledge. Having Katie Farmer and Adam Johnson (BNSF CEO and Greg's successor as the non-insurance subsidiary boss, respectively) hit on a few notes. More voices keeps interest, and similarly to Ajit, they had the ability to go deeper on a couple subjects than Greg can. Such answers are less pat and more informative to the studious investor.
3. I think about 2/3 of the audience questions were from folks born in China. I simply found that interesting.
4. I too would like to see the Tokio Marine relationship continue to develop and mature. A 2.5% stake at $1.8b implies a $72b-ish valuation...I suspect this could be like an Iscar acquisition, but about 20x as large. Wow, was Iscar really 20 years ago?
5. I would love to see Berkshire investigate other very nicely valued overseas opportunities - Hyundai, anyone? (I tried, very hard, to see if there was a reasonably easy way to buy Korean tickers, but there really isn't). US markets don't provide many value plays today, in a slightly maniacal AI. world where Intel spikes 5-10% over and over despite still losing money.
6. What would impress me next year would be to have more of the CEOs of the holdings on hand. Clayton, Geico, Marmon, McLane, Pilot, a good smattering if not all of the bigger ones. Then, Greg can do an initial take on an answer, and toss to Kevin Clayton to elaborate (or offer a Charlie-esque "nothing to add").
7. The board has one too many people named Buffett on it. Pick a kid. After reading The Snowball, I hope it isn't Howard, who seems to be a bit of a wild man per Alice Schroeder's account, and not really interested in any of this. The board is still too old.
8. It was painful watching 60 and 70 year olds that aren't tech people talk about cybersecurity. As a 50something I can barely do this coherently, and it was my job for many years. Again, Greg can have Berkshire's CTO in the crowd, and punt to them like he can punt to Kevin about manufactured homes questions.
