Whitney Tilson’s email to investors discussing his 3 programs in NYC this week (email me if you’re a young/emerging investor and want to attend); free webinar today at 5pm; my video interview; Buffett Offered Uber a $3B Investment; Chinese investors and the cult of Warren Buffett.
VW readers can use “VW10″ for a big discount
Q1 hedge fund letters, conference, scoops etc, Also read Lear Capital: Financial Products You Should Avoid?
1) We’re teaching our three programs in NYC starting tomorrow with our new one-day program, an Advanced Seminar on Short Selling, followed by a three-day Lessons from the Trenches investing bootcamp Wed.-Fri., and a one-day seminar on How to Launch and Build an Investment Fund on Saturday. We typically fill our last few seats at a steep discount for young/emerging investors, so if you’re available on short notice please email me and we’ll try to accommodate you.
2) I thought we’d be lucky to get 50 people for our free webinar this afternoon at 5pm, but we’re at nearly 300 registrations and counting! Here are the details if you wish to join:
Via our new business, Kase Learning, my long-time partner Glenn Tongue and I are teaching value investing and investment entrepreneurship to the next generation of investors. Our programs are primarily aimed at experienced investors and are highly personalized, so they aren’t cheap (up to $2,500/day), but just for fun we’re teaching a free two-hour seminar for beginners, An Introduction to Value Investing, this coming Monday, June 11 from 5:00-7:00 p.m. New York time.
For the first time, we will be teaching via an online webinar so anyone, anywhere in the world can participate. To register, click here. (We will also record it and post it publicly afterward.)
VW readers can use "VW10" for a big discount
During the seminar we will cover various topics including: the definition of value investing, intrinsic value, margin of safety, three ways to beat the market, the three steps to evaluating stocks, valuation techniques, traits of successful investors, and how to develop an edge. We’ll also share our analysis of two of our current favorite stocks, Berkshire Hathaway and Google, and leave plenty of time for Q&A as well.
I hope you can join us!
3) Here’s the entire 14:27 video of the interview I did with TheStreet.com last week: Warren Buffett Is Here to Stay
4) It’s amazing to see a guy Buffett’s age (87) still learning and willing to invest in things like Uber (on his terms, of course!): Warren Buffett Offered Uber a $3 Billion Investment, but Talks Fell Apart.
5) The number of Chinese investors at the Berkshire meeting blew my mind! Chinese investors and the cult of Warren Buffett. Excerpt:
......................
News reports indicate that the Chinese contingent at the Berkshire Hathaway meeting has grown toward 5,000 this year, up from roughly 1,000 in 2014. Many are not Berkshire shareholders. They come for the spectacle, the networking and the learning. Yahoo Finance live-streamed the annual meeting to 3 million people worldwide last Saturday in two languages: English and Mandarin.
In China, Buffett’s visage has adorned Cherry Coke bottles, mouse pads and phone cases. Two separate Chinese executives gave more than $2 million to a charity to have lunch with Buffett in 2008 and 2015. Buffett’s long-term view, his humility to admit mistakes and his traditional demeanor align with Chinese values. His story of growing wealthy through intelligence rather than inheritance inspires many Chinese.
6) An interesting, in-depth article: Can the cult of Berkshire Hathaway outlive Warren Buffett? Excerpt:
Centuries from now, historians piecing together the narrative of this stretch of America’s existence will have to explain the curious four-decade (and counting) run in which an arena in an otherwise modest midwestern US city filled to capacity once a year for two aging billionaires talking about the stock market, life, and whatever else tickled their fancy.
The annual meeting of the Omaha, Nebraska-based holding company Berkshire Hathaway has no analog in US business or culture.
Announcements for the typical corporate annual meeting go straight into most shareholders’ recycling bins. But for Berkshire Hathaway’s, people fly in from Shanghai, Cape Town, and New York City; they drive in from all corners of the US. They bring their babies, their parents, their neighbors, their friends. They are professional asset managers for whom the long weekend is a four-day sprint of deals and networking, and semi-retired Omahans whose grandparents entrusted their money back in the 1960s to a bright young local fund manager named Warren Buffett and as a result made their descendants extremely rich.
...........................................
Thursday
The cult of Buffett is a testament to the uniquely American ability to look at a person who alone possesses more wealth than the entire nation of Uruguay and see an Everyman. Countless books and articles fetishize his work habits, his reading list, the aggressive modesty of his lifestyle relative to his net worth. He drives himself to work, breakfasts at McDonald’s, and has lived in the same house since 1958—a 6,750 square-foot house, yes, but in Omaha, a midwestern US city as far from either elitist coast as it is possible to be.
