This Saturday, Berkshire Hathaway shareholders will descend upon Omaha, Nebraska, for the company’s annual meeting, just as they did for over 60 years before. But for the first time ever, they’ll be doing it withoutWarren Buffett sitting in as company CEO.
Though Buffett, 95, will still be in attendance this year, but he’s not set to speak, according to the meeting schedule. And even though he’ll be less hands-on this year, Buffett is still chairman of Berkshire’s board of directors and remains the company’s largest shareholder, holding about 30% of the voting interest and 13.7% of the economic interest.
Every year between 1965 and 2024, Buffett wrote a letter to shareholders ahead of the annual “Woodstock for Capitalists.” Here are some of the “Oracle of Omaha’s” best reflections from his annual letters:
The best holding period? Forever
Coca-Cola and Apple rank among Berkshire’s most successful investments, but when Buffett started to buy Coke shares in the 1980s, the choice wasn’t so obvious.
“We made major purchases of Federal Home Loan Mortgage Pfd. (“Freddie Mac”) and Coca-Cola. We expect to hold these securities for a long time. In fact, when we own portions of outstanding businesses with outstanding managements, our favorite holding period is forever,” Buffett wrote in his 1989 letter.
In the years after that letter, Berkshire bought 400 million shares of Coca-Cola stock, spending about $1.3 billion in total. Now, the company owns 9.3% of Coca-Cola, worth more than $31 billion.
Don’t be a duck
In 1998, Buffett warned against overstating your impact.
“In a bull market, one must avoid the error of the preening duck that quacks boastfully after a torrential rainstorm, thinking that its paddling skills have caused it to rise in the world. A right-thinking duck would instead compare its position after the downpour to that of the other ducks on the pond,” he wrote.
“So what’s our duck rating for 1997? The table on the facing page shows that though we paddled furiously last year, passive ducks that simply invested in the S&P Index rose almost as fast as we did.”
Where we went wrong in 2008
In 2009, in the wake of the financial crisis, Buffett shared one place he thought Wall Street went wrong.
“When the financial history of this decade is written, it will surely speak of the Internet bubble of the late 1990s and the housing bubble of the early 2000s. But the U.S. Treasury bond bubble of late 2008 may be regarded as almost equally extraordinary,” he said. He added that investors who “clinging” to cash equivalents and long-term government bonds felt validated by commentators saying “cash is king” would be in for a rude awakening.
“Approval, though, is not the goal of investing. In fact, approval is often counter-productive because it sedates the brain and makes it less receptive to new facts or a re-examination of conclusions formed earlier. Beware the investment activity that produces applause; the great moves are usually greeted by yawns,” he wrote.
Betting on the U.S.
In one of his last letters, Buffett shared how being a U.S.-based company contributed to Berkshire’s success.
“At Berkshire we hope and expect to pay much more in taxes during the next decade. We owe the country no less: America’s dynamism has made a huge contribution to whatever success Berkshire has achieved – a contribution Berkshire will always need. We count on the American Tailwind and, though it has been becalmed from time to time, its propelling force has always returned,” Buffett wrote in 2023.
“I have been investing for 80 years—more than one-third of our country’s lifetime. Despite our citizens’ penchant—almost enthusiasm—for self-criticism and self-doubt, I have yet to see a time when it made sense to make a long-term bet against America. And I doubt very much that any reader of this letter will have a different experience in the future.”
‘The casino now resides in many homes’
In 2024, Buffett offered prescient reflections on the unruliness of the market, long before the prediction markets began to sway Wall Street.
“Though the stock market is massively larger than it was in our early years, today’s active participants are neither more emotionally stable nor better taught than when I was in school. For whatever reasons, markets now exhibit far more casino-like behavior than they did when I was young. The casino now resides in many homes and daily tempts the occupants.”
“One fact of financial life should never be forgotten. Wall Street – to use the term in its figurative sense – would like its customers to make money, but what truly causes its denizens’ juices to flow is feverish activity. At such times, whatever foolishness can be marketed will be vigorously marketed – not by everyone but always by someone.”
Learning from the master
Buffett’s successor, Greg Abel, has continued the yearly tradition and wrote his first shareholder letter in February. He began by praising Buffett.
“Warren Buffett is arguably the greatest investor of all time, with generations benefiting from his
investment acumen,” Abel wrote. “He has also been a remarkable CEO, executing his vision of building a great insurance business since the acquisition of National Indemnity in 1967, and deploying the float to make successful investments across major sectors of the economy, concentrating in the U.S. (To Warren’s great frustration, this letter begins with these observations – yet we all know they are true.)”
