Amber and I went to our first Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting. We had a great time and it was well worth the experience. It is a recommended experience for anyone who wants to be a long term investor.
We have read a couple of books about Warren Buffett and some of his writings (mostly annual reports). He has a real gift for writing in such a way that complex business ideas are understandable to lay people. His high level of integrity and long term fundamental investing approach really attracts us. If you want to learn more about him and his investment approach, ask me for book suggestions.
Friday 5/4/07
Amber and I flew to Omaha in the morning. We went to Buffett’s favorite steak restaurant Gorat’s, for dinner.
Since there were so many people we had to share a table with two Canadian guys. It seems that Canada keeps popping up in our life.
Saturday 5/5/07
The annual meeting starts earlier in the morning, but we had to leave way before it even started just to get seats. We stayed 30 minutes away from Omaha in the town of Missouri Valley, Iowa. We were told that all the hotels within a 45 minute radius of Omaha are booked because of the Berkshire Annual meeting and because it was a big high school graduation weekend also. The meeting was held in the Qwest Center and started right on time. The main part of the event was about 4 to 5 hours of shareholders asking questions to Warren and Charlie. Anyone could go to a microphone and ask whatever question they wanted except what stock or companies Berkshire was in the process of buying. There were many topics, some quite unrelated to business, that Warren and Charlie answered. I was impressed how fearless they were in giving direct answers to difficult questions.
Between breaks and later in the day Amber and I visited the convention center floor. The convention center is attached to the Quest center and it held exhibits from many of the companies owned wholly or in part by Berkshire.
After the meeting concluded, we hustled over to beat the crowd to the Net Jets display at a hanger in Omaha airport. This was quite exciting. We toured 3 different airplanes and got a sense for how the wealthy fly. It is such a different way to fly. We talked with one of the pilots who told us how the system works. Basically you can call up the night before and have a plane waiting for you the next day at just about any airport near you. Imagine how easy it would be to fly if you could take off and land from a local municipal airport, and you could arrive only 10 minutes before your plane departed. Well, enough dreaming…
Just around 5pm we left for the Financial Fiest (it was Cinco de Mayo) dinner event at Nebraska Furniture Mart. Following dinner we toured NFM which is quite large. We hear that people drive from all over Nebraska, and even the near by states to buy their furniture at the NFM. With the high price for corn currently, apparently the local farmers are quite prosperous and have increased their purchases of furniture. Back at our hotel in Iowa we spent the night listening to the huge thunderstorms. This was the weekend of the large string of thunderstorms that covered a huge swath of land from northern Texas to the Dakotas. You may remember that some towns in Kansas were hit by tornados.
Sunday 5/6/07
We woke up to water everywhere. The ground was soaked and the rivers full. The main events for the day were back at Borsheims. One of the highlights was Warren taking on 11-year old Ariel Hsing in a ping pong match. She is the girls 16-and-under and boys 12-and-under US champion. It wasn’t a full game but very fun to watch. Bill Gates, Berkshire board member and friend of Warren, also tried his hand at ping pong. These old guys were no match for Ariel. However, I must say Warren and Bill were pretty agile, I expected them to be much less spry for being either 76 years old or a computer nerd.
With all the rain and wind, our flight was delayed an hour or so. Unfortunately, my ice hockey team’s multi-rink championship game was this night. I missed it! My team won in most the dramatic fashion on the 14th round of a shootout. I have watched the DVD video (yes there is one) and it was one of the best games that I have seen.
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