Warren Buffett shares a letter with investors every year, along with the financial report of Berkshire Hathaway. This year, on February 25, the most awaited letter was published in which Warren Buffett gave a few important lessons to investors. He called the critics of share-buyback economic illiterate or silver-tongued demagogues. “When you are told that all repurchases are harmful to shareholders or to the country, or particularly beneficial to CEOs, you are listening to either an economic illiterate or a silver-tongued demagogue (characters that are not mutually exclusive),” Buffett said.
Warren Buffett’s key lessons for investors
1. Berkshire Hathaway purchased Coca-Cola and American Express shares worth $2.6 billion in the mid-1990s. By 2022 the investment was valued at $47 billion.
2. Warren Buffett talked about his business partner Charlie Munger in his letter. He said they both think alike but what it takes Warren Buffett a page to explain, Charlie Munger sums up in a sentence. Charlie Munger’s version, moreover, is always more clearly reasoned.
The lesson for investors: “I will add to Charlie’s list a rule of my own: Find a very smart high-grade partner – preferably slightly older than you – and then listen very carefully to what he says,” Warren Buffett said.
3. Warren Buffett emphasised that his long-time business partner Charlie Munger and he are business pickers, not stock pickers. He further said that efficient markets exist only in textbooks.
“We own publicly-traded stocks based on our expectations about their long-term business performance, not because we view them as vehicles for adroit purchases and sales. That point is crucial: Charlie and I are not stock-pickers; we are business pickers,” Warren Buffett said.