Sunday, May 3, 2009

Omaha Trip for Annual Meeting 2009

The moment I was waiting for, from past 3 months, came true Yesterday.

I attended the Berkshire Hathaway Share holders Annual Meeting on May 2nd 2009.

Here is a small write up about the my experience about the trip.


Friday:

I started from Sunnyvale and got flight on Friday afternoon. I reached Omaha by night 11:10. My friend picked me up from Airport. We checked-in at hotel and had brief chatting as we are meeting after few months. We got all the stuff together for next day’s meeting like Shares purchase proof, Shareholders invite, Passport etc.


Saturday:

The meeting was at Quest Arena in Omaha. The doors for the Quest Arena were opened at 7AM and there was an animated movie at 8:30 AM. We reached there by 9:15 and got into the Arena. Surprisingly the area is full and we were asked to sit in the ballrooms where there were only big screens. We wanted to get into arena and see Warren and Charlie so we went into Arena and stood for the whole morning session of 31/2 hours.


The words of the Day from Buffett and Charlie:

  • We live with it, we deal with it - Buffett
  • I hope you listen to me, I know you are smart, but I am right. - Charles Thomas Munger
  • I always like low price and I know you all do like it – Buffett
  • I don’t believe in Efficient Market Theroy – Buffett

High lights of the day on the Annual meeting:

  1. There should always competitive advantage to for grow our business.
  2. There were lots of questions on the successor Warren and he didn’t announce it. Warren mentioned, to become a CEO, its not only the skills to run the business, another important factor is to maintain relationships, look for business opportunities and growing relations where we can grow business.
  3. The holding period is forever valid as far the company won’t change the business what they were doing when we bought the stock.
  4. Berkshire Stock is available for low price doesn’t mean we lost our stock value,
  5. Wells Fargo is a Good Investment and one of the good financial institutes in the current market situations
  6. On Bonus pays: I missed this question and looking for this question and answer on the web.
  7. Loosing AAA rating from Moody’s is not a problem. We are still a AAA company from S&P. I am sure Moody’s soon change their way in Rating BRK.
  8. There were questions on new investment in rechargeable batteries.
  9. Today stock prices are not like 1970. Now they are expensive compared to 1970s.

The memorable Moment

There is a tradition that Warren spends One-and-Half hour with the shareholders who are outside US & Canada. We were lucky to get entry into that and got WARREN BUFFETT’s autograph on the Benjamin Graham’s Book “The Intelligent Investor”. It was a nice experience.


In the night we had dinner and spent sometime in the Omaha Downtown. Later we drove to Casio in Iowa and spend few hours there. We had good fun @ Casino.


Sunday:

The tradition is the next day the board of directors play bridge with the people who gave their names. We reached there by 11:15AM and waiting for Warren, Bill Gates and others.

At Borsheims, Buffett came to Bridge game 1PM. In few minutes the Re-insurance Manager Ajit Jain also came to Play Bridge. After 20 minutes, Bill Gates came and joined the Warren to play Bridge and They played couple of games. It was a nice moment to see all of them playing bridge and same place on different tables. Afterwards Bill moved to table, where Ajit Jain was playing. After 10 mins, Warren left the place. After few minutes, Ajit Jain also left the place. My friend got the Autograph of Ajit before he was leaving. We waited for another 2 hours to get Bill Gates Autograph. We stood for almost 5 hours on Sunday for watching the bridge and to get Autographs from Ajit and Bill Gates.

Later, We went to see Warren Buffett’s house and then came to Airport.

Overall, its an amazing experience and very memorable.