Eighty-seven-year-old Warren Buffett hosts the nearest thing investors have to a revival meeting Saturday, the annual meeting of Berkshire Hathaway. It’s an opportunity for Buffett’s admirers to question him at length about anything that strikes their fancy.
There’s a reason investors great and small seek guidance from Buffett. Sure, he’s plain spoken. That’s a good and under-appreciated quality in our age of bloviated self-promotion. But Buffett’s straight talk understates his value. Simpler sometimes is better. Buffett invests in high-quality businesses and special situations he deems worthwhile. His investment vehicle has become so large that it is like a more intelligent index fund. It’s a proxy for the U.S. economy leavened with Buffett’s own wisdom and investment acumen.
Still, there’s plenty to discuss. Why, for example, has the avowed technophobe become so enamored with Apple? Could it simply be the 1.44%-and-growing dividend yield? Buffett might explain.
And what to make of his faltering investment in Kraft Heinz, a collaboration with Brazil’s 3G Capital whose own co-founder, Jorge Paulo Lemann, acknowledged recently missed key food-industry trends. Buffett has earned the right to make mistakes. Hearing his explanations for them is all the more edifying.
Finally, perhaps the no-nonsense Midwesterner can help make sense of the through-the-looking-glass world in which we live. Does he think deficit-generating tax cuts are the answer? Is his globalist worldview threatened by the U.S. administration’s protectionist saber rattling? Given all the upheaval in the world, what geographies most excite Buffett today? Never shy about weighing in on politics, how does he rate Donald Trump’s high-beta presidency and its impact on the stock market and the global economy?
Thanks for having me invade your inboxes this week. I hope you’ve enjoyed the different perspective. Alan will be back Monday.
Have a good weekend.
| Adam Lashinsky | |
| @adamlashinsky | |
| adam.lashinsky@fortune.com |
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