• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Start Here
  • Our YouTube Channel
  • Mile High FI Podcast
  • About Me
  • I ♥ Longmont
    • Cowork In Longmont
    • Live In Longmont
  • Stuff We Like
    • Tesla In Ten Years
  • Best Credit Card Offers
  • Contact
    • Media
    • Guest Post

1500 Days to Freedom

Think different and escape the rat race.

1500 Days to Freedom
  • My Investments! (REAL TIME!)
  • Bucket List
    • Anti Bucket List
  • All Posts
  • Best Posts
  • Guest Post Policy
  • 10 Questions
  • Tesla In Ten Years

Berkshire Hathaway 2023

May 9, 2023 by Mr. 1500 Days 13 Comments

Mindy and I just got back from attending the Berkshire Hathaway (BH) meeting with a couple of friends. BH is the conglomerate famously run by Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger.

The meeting consists of a 30 minute movie followed by a question and answer session.

The event is quite the spectacle. Over 50,000 people travel from all over the world to attend.

Berkshire Hathaway 2023

I take a lot of notes during the meeting. Here is what I thought was interesting.

Investing

Mandatory diversification is ridiculous.

-Charlie

This is great advice if you have Charlie’s investing skills and temperament. Everyone else should stick to indexing.

We are not smart, but we know where the edges of our abilities are.

-Charlie

Know your circles of competence and don’t leave them.

People from MIT should not be in wealth management.

-Charlie

This is something I think a lot about. Many of the best brains in the world work in fields like high-speed trading. Too bad they aren’t trying to solve nuclear fusion or Alzheimer’s instead.

I don’t understand the iPhone, but I understand consumer behavior. Many would give up their second car before they’d give up their iPhone.

-Warren

Technology

A couple people asked about artificial intelligence:

AI can’t replace Ajit.

-Warren

I think old fashioned intelligence works pretty well.

-Charlie

I think that Warren and Charlie are underestimating AI.

Geico is taking the bull by the horns.

-Ajit

Ajit was talking about GEICO embracing telematics. In the past, Warren has dismissed the technology stating that GEICO’s strategies could compete. Whoops. They are late to this bus too.

EVs are coming on big time, but there are huge capital costs and big risks.

-Warren

BH will not be investing in electric vehicles any time soon.

On the state of the country

Partisanship has devolved into tribalism.

Japan has a cohesive culture and we don’t.

-Buffett and Munger

Warren and Charlie are clearly concerned about the divisions in America.

China-US tensions

Both sides are guilty. We need as much free trade as possible. Reciprocate stupidity with kindness.

-Charlie

I don’t like its location and reevaluated…

-Warren

Warren was referring to BH’s sale of Taiwan Semiconductor shares months after buying them. This is scary. He clearly isn’t optimistic about China and Taiwan.

Random

Create your obituary and then reverse engineer your life.

-Warren

I like this one a lot.

Your best defense is your own earning power.

-Warren

I’ve known billionaires who die with no friends.

-Warren

Get toxic people the hell out of your life and do it fast.

-Charlie

I can’t pretend to like some of the boyfriends and girlfriends I don’t like. I just stay silent.

-Charlie talking about his grandchildren’s choice of partners

The best road to happiness is to expect less because the future won’t be as good.

-Charlie

Whoah.                                                                                                          

Two Takeaways

Is Berkshire falling behind?

  • For the longest time, Buffett dismissed telematics insisting that Geico had enough data to be competitive. Ajit acknowledged this was an error.
  • Buffett and Munger dismissed AI.
  • BNSF has been late to adopt precision railroading.

I can’t help but think that Berkshire is falling behind due to its failure to acknowledge and adapt to new technologies.

Pessimism

My biggest reason for attending the Berkshire Hathaway meeting in the past was Warren and Charlies’ optimism. This meeting had a darker tone. They spoke at length about how tribalism is dividing America. Buffett is clearly concerned about a China invasion of Taiwan. Munger came right out and said that the future won’t be as good. Oof.

Omaha

Meeting aside, I like Omaha a lot. I went there as a kid often to visit relatives. Also, the Midwest is where I grew up, so I’m a bit biased.

I’m not sure if I’ll be back to another Berkshire Hathaway meeting, but I will be back to Omaha.

More 1500 Days!!!

You can also find me (and the dinosaurs) at:

Mile High FI podcast:

  • Listen on Apple, Google, YouTube, and Spotify

Also here:

  • Facebook: Facebook group and page
  • YouTube: My channel is mostly devoted to home improvement, but I have some other material coming up soon too.
  • Instagram: Pretty pictures of dinosaurs, sunsets, and nail guns!
  • Twitter: Spontaneous, often insane, ramblings
  • Coworking space: On the surface, MMM HQ is a coworking space. Look a little deeper and you’ll see that we’re really building community. The members of MMM HQ are some of the finest people I know.

Join the 10s who have signed up already!

Subscribing will improve your life in incredible ways*.

*Only if your life is pretty bad to begin with.

Thank you!! Please check your email to confirm your subscription.

There was an error submitting your subscription. Please try again.

Powered by ConvertKit

Filed Under: Something Completely Different Tagged With: berkshire hathaway, warren buffett

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Rakesh Mishra says

    May 9, 2023 at 9:12 am

    Thank you summarizing all the quotes. I have not seen any video yet. But I get it. WB is usually very optimistic but when he sold all airlines stocks during pandemic, I thought it was premature. And people travelled a lot in last 2 years.

    Thanks for all the pictures.

    How did you do at 5K?

    Reply
    • Mr. 1500 Days says

      May 9, 2023 at 9:54 am

      5K was a bust! I was hoping for a new personal record (under 29 minutes), but I finished in 32 instead. Oof.

      Reply
      • Rakesh Mishra says

        May 9, 2023 at 1:14 pm

        32 minutes is great! I probably cannot do that now. Next run, 29 minutes.

        Reply
        • Mr. 1500 Days says

          May 9, 2023 at 9:23 pm

          Just ran today! Yay!

          I’m not sure what dates you’ll be here, but:

          5k!

          Reply
  2. Mick says

    May 9, 2023 at 12:54 pm

    What about the speaker who was arrested?

    Reply
    • Mr. 1500 Days says

      May 9, 2023 at 9:22 pm

      Hmmm, I must have missed that part. We left after the Q and A.

      Reply
  3. Mr. Money Mustache says

    May 9, 2023 at 11:07 pm

    How interesting to hear about their change of tone on world events. Stuff *always* sounds scary out there if I read enough about it, but then strangely enough, the world keeps finding ways to accomplish things. And hopefully there are still enough of us optimists out there to make the future good, since it’s really a self-fulfilling prophecy.

    In the case of Warren and Charlie, unfortunately their own future is pretty brief either way even though I wish we could keep them around forever. I wonder if that factor ever weighs upon their optimism – it seems like it takes energy to be optimistic, and that would be in shorter supply in one’s 90s and 100s.

    Reply
    • Lucas L says

      May 10, 2023 at 1:46 am

      Yeah, optimism is a self-fulfilling, tail wags the dog kind of thing. If they think their time is up soon, then it must be harder to muster the energy to be optimistic in spite of the bad news tide. Even if it is an ugly little epoch the world is in, things will change and improve eventually.

      Did anyone else find it incoherent how bullish Warren is on Apple while being bearish on TSMC? If TSMC’s operations are disrupted, where is Apple going to get all its custom-designed CPUs made?

      Reply
      • Mr. 1500 Days says

        May 10, 2023 at 7:19 am

        I didn’t think of Apple v. TSMC. Also, according to Google, more than 95% of Apple’s products are made in China. That’s going to be a very uncomfortable situation should we go to war with China.

        Reply
    • Mr. 1500 Days says

      May 10, 2023 at 7:24 am

      Another thought: One reason that I’m optimistic about the future is because I believe AI has the potential to solve many of the issues that face us humans. Since Charlie and Warren underappreciate AI, it makes that they’d be a little more pessimistic.

      I also wonder why Warren pulled out of TSMC so fast. China relations with Taiwan (and the US) didn’t change much (always shitty) over the 5 month time period in which he bought and sold. I’m wondering what specifically he heard that scared him off.

      Reply
  4. Tech says

    May 10, 2023 at 9:07 am

    I currently don’t hold any BH shares, but always wanted to attend one of those shareholders meetings. Although this one would have been disappointing with the lack of optimism. Maybe this is one of those things I will never get to do, but checking out Omaha and going to the restaurant where Warren and Charlie have their steak dinners is on the bucket list once FIRE’d.

    Thanks for the summary and photos. The event posters look like a throw back to the 60-70’s

    Reply
  5. Brett Johnson says

    May 17, 2023 at 5:19 pm

    The Berkshire Hathaway meeting in 2023 was a total blast! Warren Buffett had everyone hooked with his epic insights into the company’s investments and what’s coming up. The dude knows how to keep it real, stressing the need for long-term gains and smart choices. Shareholders left the meeting stoked, ready to ride the Berkshire Hathaway wave to success with Buffett at the helm.

    Reply
  6. Bdub says

    May 18, 2023 at 5:44 pm

    Unfortunately, I think the phase “past performance is no guarantee of future returns” might now apply to these two. We certainly didn’t expect to live forever, did we?

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

CommentLuv badgeShow more posts

Primary Sidebar

Follow Us!

Follow Us on FacebookFollow Us on TwitterFollow Us on RSSFollow Us on Instagram

Freedom!

My goal was to build a portfolio of $1,000,000 by February of 2017; 1500 days from the birth of this blog (January 1, 2013). And hey look, I’ve since retired!

Investments only (primary home excluded)
1/1/13 (The Start): $586,043
1/1/14 (1 Yr Later): $869,635
1/1/15 (2 Yrs Later): $987,351
1/1/16 (3 Yrs Later): $1,057,961
1/1/17 (4 Yrs Later): $1,257,128
1/1/18 (5 Yrs Later): $1,527,701
1/1/19 (6 Yrs Later): $1,549,440
1/1/20 (7 Yrs Later): $2,035,040*
1/1/21 (8 Yrs Later): $3,379,746**
1/1/22 (9 Yrs Later): $4,762,642
1/1/23 (10 Yrs Later): $3,112,821

2023: Investments only
1/1: $3,112,821
2/1: $3,582,368
3/1: $3,716,852
4/1: $3,861,599

Gains: $748,778

Overall
Gains since 1/1/2013: $3,275,556
Net worth***: $4,091,599

* The big jump between 2019 and 2020 was partly because we bought another home, but kept the previous (much more expensive) one as a rental. We have since sold it.

** Tesla.

*** Includes our primary home equity in addition to our investment portfolio.

Finally, we still have about $290,000 in mortgage debt (which I love!). No regrets about the debts!

Featured in

Smiley face

Disclaimer

Investing is risky business. The information contained on this site is for informational purposes only. As with all matters financial, proceed with caution. Do your research and seek professional advice.

Get my annoying emails!

Join 1500 Days! (now 27% less annoying)

Subscribe to get great good pretty ok content by email.

Thanks so much! Check your email to confirm your subscription.

There was an error submitting your subscription. Please try again.

Powered by ConvertKit

All Posts

Read all the posts ever published to 1500 Days of Freedom.

© 2023 1500 Days to Freedom · Privacy Policy · Contact