In case you missed it, the annual Woodstock of Capitalism (more commonly known as the Berkshire Hathaway annual general meeting) was held in Omaha on May 5th. For 2018 Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger again sat for several hours in front of a huge crowd answering questions.
Thankfully, these meetings are provided live online for free and available after the fact too. The link to the video is below and is worth watching.
John Huber of Base Hit Investing (blog) fame also did a post about the AGM.
He had a very interesting observation:
"Yes, the markets are extremely competitive. Being in a city with so many other investors really drives this point home. But it also drives home the point that competitiveness tends to shorten investors’ collective time horizon, which makes it all the more important that one avoids groupthink and tries to utilize a time horizon that other investors aren’t capable, willing, or structured to take advantage of."
On our own separate front, one of us is doing research on a large cap Company. After going through transcripts of a few years of quarterly calls, how many questions from analysts do you think were asking about beyond the next few quarters? Exactly zero.
He also notes an excellent quote from Warren Buffett from an interview prior to the AGM. WB was asked what his thoughts were on Apple's latest quarter:
“We don’t own it for the next quarter. It’s incredible to me how you read the investor conference calls… you read all the analyst reports… they talk about what it’s going to do next year. No one buys a farm based on whether they think it’s going to rain next year or not.”
Short-term thinking indeed. Check out his full post here: http://basehitinvesting.com/two-berkshire-takeaways-and-thoughts-on-competitive-markets/