Full afternoon Q&A session from the 2003 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting with the world’s richest man and most successful investor Warren Buffett and his partner, Charlie Munger.
Q1 hedge fund letters, conference, scoops etc, Also read Lear Capital: Financial Products You Should Avoid?
PM 2003 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting With Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger Full Q&A
Transcript
OK. We have no afternoon movie. So we'll get to business in a second. If everybody we'll just find their seats please. I've been advised by Mark Hamburg the make sure I make clear what I may not have made clear earlier in terms of the figures we gave you about the first quarter and I think I said we had 16 billion of cash or cash equivalents which is correct. We had a 290 million dollar pre-tax underwriting profit. And I think I said that where I wasn't possibly I may have misstated. We had a billion seven hundred million pretax operational gain. We had actually also by coincidence very close to a billion seven of aftertax counting securities gains but our operating gain excluding security gains was about a billion 7 pretax let's start right in. And at number one. Yes. My name is all about. And I am from Vienna Austria. I may because she has two parts so the first part is how do you get that fuel excise land investment ideas to be so successful do usually end in a special YOU PAY US oil industry magazines or do you visit their head. Call us. And the subsidy is off companies and Veach sources of information like folks Floyd Zampa Baliol lines then that poor US Moody's popped up a cyst like ahoi Splatoon Bulak they got us. And your reports ain't on that and so on. Do you use to get that white to imply a Schnall FA comp and the second pop. If you'll think that they comp and the like.
They have all Schenkkan post game or that has a competitive plot arc Valk this steps before you or I timidly decide to invest into a company. Vich publications do usually get their best knowledge off the product and how important is that balance sheet and profit and loss account statement of the company. Thank you so much. Thank you. The answer to the first part is sort of maybe the second part is sort of all of the above. And we we read a lot and we read daily publications we read weekly or monthly periodicals we read annual reports we read 10 ks we read 10 Qs and fortunately the investment business is a business where knowledge cumulate I mean everything you learn when you're 20 or 30 you may tweak some as you go along. But it all kind of builds into a knowledge base that is useful forever and and we are at least you know I read Charlie used to read may still read a fair amount but I've read a lot of 10 k's read a lot of annual reports forty or fifty years ago I did a lot of talking to management. I used to go out and take a trip every now and then and really drop in on maybe 15 or 20 companies. I haven't done that for a long long time. I find everything we do. Pretty much I find through public documents when I made an offer for Clayton Homes. I've never visited the business I've never met the people I've done it over the phone I've read Jim Clayton's book. I looked at the 10 days I knew every company in the industry.
I look at competitors and I try to I try to understand the business and not have any preconceived notions. And there is adequate information out there to evaluate a great many businesses we do not. We do not find it particularly helpful to talk to management's managements frequently want to come to Omaha and talk to me and they usually have a variety of reasons that they say they want to talk to me about what they're really hoping as we get interested in their stock. That never works at managements are not are not the best reporting case. The figures tell us more than a management does so we we do not spend.
