A collection of interviews with Warren Buffett.
Q1 hedge fund letters, conference, scoops etc, Also read Lear Capital: Financial Products You Should Avoid?
Warren Buffett Interview Collection
Transcript
Yeah this is again a mock up of your grandfather's store where you worked yourself. Yeah actually this is my great grandfather my grandfather did work at the store but it was originally citizens and he had two sons that worked with him. Ernest and Frank and they fell in love with the same woman who worked at the store. She married one of the other would speak to the guy for a year. It's only the Ernest buffets. Yeah that's right. That's right. What we want to thank you very much for being here and for agreeing to take questions from our viewers today globally from we're in front of a mock up of the Ernest buffet grocery store which is a store. Mr. Buffett knows well he worked there himself as a youngster. And Warren thank you again for being with us as well. Thank you. That was the last time I did the real work. And since then it's gotten a little easier this is much easier. The only thing I learned from that store was I didn't like hard work. That's a good way to grow up and to figure things out. You know I don't know if you just heard Carl and Joe talking a little bit about the markets and the situation yesterday. Oil prices seem to have been dictating where the market's been headed for the last week and a half or so. Do you worry about what oil prices do you worry about what's happening in the Middle East. Well it worries us citizen about about what's happening but in terms of our investments.
No it doesn't have anything to do with where Geico or Coca-Cola are going to be in five years from now. But I have no good day to day or week to week month to month. Stock prices unfortunately don't have to be Joe just mentioned that we spoke with someone yesterday who said the market is doing exactly what it should be which is overreacting. He used to run Saudi Aramco and it's an interesting position even though you look at these prices we've heard from Ben Bernanke and others that this is not something we need to be concerned about yet. Is that where you come in on this. Well I just. Oil is the same way the demand is pretty inelastic in the short run. And yet you see oil prices running back up above 100 dollars. That's where they were trading yesterday and the extended hours. Is that something that you think is tied to speculation. Is that something that is is or could be prevented or is this a real supply situation. Well there's a real supply situation yet but markets anticipate and then if people are not worried about Libya getting cut off what they're worried about is that the unrest spreads and that is so three or four million barrels a day would get cut off. And that's a rational thing to worry about what the probability is of it happening. Who knows but it is zero and it looks higher now than it would have looked two months ago.
So that that starts Kypri gets reflected in prices as markets anticipate your annual shareholders letter that you just came out with on Saturday and painted a much more optimistic picture of America than many people had been thinking to this point. Why is that. Why. Well I've been optimistic on America right along as you know. I mean I was optimistic when I knew things were going to go to hell. But but things do a merger gets off the track from time to time and it was particularly so in the fall of 2008. But but you can't stop this country. I mean we have gone through I don't know 15 recessions you know world wars civil war you name it. And there is a resiliency to the American system. It does work back on track. But are we chugging along. Are we inching along. How are things going. Probably closer to inching in most businesses and in residential construction it's not inching it is not going at all. But so you do have this uneven situation. We have a few businesses that are the kind of booming but we have a great many businesses that are moving forward. And then we have a few that are stuck. And but I think that's true of the economy. But what we've seen now for almost two years is we've seen it getting better rather consistently but not in a dramatic dramatic pace. And what has been interesting to me is that the sentiment has gone up and down quite a bit during a period when you really haven't seen that much change in the underlying trend. And and in terms of your business as you say you have some that are booming. Which ones are nuts. Well I mentioned the new report.
We've got an electronic component distributor ship and a company called DTI. And they're booming in Asia. They're booming in Europe but they're booming in this country and they sell these little things the cost you know a couple of pennies is like selling jellybeans or something of that sort. But they go to all kinds of customers and their business has never been strong. The railroad business has picked up it's about 60 percent of the way back from the bottom. If you take the top end car loadings take it down to the bottom we've come about 60 percent of the way back. So there's there's a considerable ways to go there. But but it's a different business and it was two years ago and it gets better by the quarter as we go along. We see our new machine cooled tools. Small small little tools are going big tools company called US car. I just got the January figures and January was a record month and now not by a huge margin.
