Annual Berkshire Hathaway Shareholders Meeting 2009

Making it out to this year's annual Berkshire Hathaway Annual Shareholders Meeting was such a thrill. Seeing Warren Buffet in person was definitely surreal and something that I can now check-off my "Bucket List".

Warren Buffet certainly has a large and enthusiastic following as shareholders even camped outside the Quest Center the night before to assure themselves a seat close to the stage where Warren Buffet and his business partner Charlie Munger would be speaking. Finding a seat anywhere proved to be quite challenging as people were saving seats and being very rude about it too. Buffet needs to make a rule that if your not present in your seat, then don't give anybody heat for taking it. Luckily they had overflow rooms so we could still listen and watch the meeting instead of starting fights with pretentious shareholders.

Buffet gave his usual witty and clever "Buffet-isms" in answering questions about Bershire businesses and the dire economy while Charlie would plug in his 2-cents afterwards. Some highlights I picked up on were:

• There is an obvious surplus in homes and therefore a leveling off period will take some time. However, even after the housing economy levels off, there's no way to predict where it will go from there. Though Charlie did say in a closing statement that if he was young and can afford to buy a home now, its a very attractive time with low prices and low interest rates.
• I don't think Warren particularly finds MBA degrees very valuable. Throughout his answers he would often comment about how MBA schools overanalyze things. He and Charlie both beleive that value investing should come from very obvious clues and not from complicated formulas. Warren also mentioned that if he were to open a school, he would only have 2 classes: learning the value of a business and reading trends in the market. (I sorta forget the 2nd one but I think it was predicting the market or something along those lines.)
• Warren believes Wells Fargo Bank is clearly a superior bank with the smartest management. Charlie was particularly adamant about only investing in Wells Fargo Bank (NYSE: WFC) and not any other bank.
• Charlie believes China is doing exactly the right things in becoming a more powerful economy. Hoarding cash and buying US Bonds with long term returns. Warren was a little on the fence in this regard but he does agree that China's fiscal policy is more efficient than the US. Obviously Warren believes in China businesses as demonstrated from his previous investment in Oil Company PetroChina (NYSE: PTR) and current investment Battery Maker BYD (HKSE: 1211).