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OMAHA, Neb. (news agencies) — Warren Buffett credited his longtime partner — the late Charlie Munger — with being the architect of the Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate he has received the credit for leading and warned shareholders in his annual letter Saturday not to listen to Wall Street pundits or financial advisers who urge them to trade often.
Buffett said he always writes his letter with smart, long-term investors like his sister Bertie in mind and tries to tell them what he thinks they would like to know about Berkshire.
“She is sensible – very sensible – instinctively knowing that pundits should always be ignored,” Buffett wrote about Bertie. “After all, if she could reliably predict tomorrow’s winners, would she freely share her valuable insights and thereby increase competitive buying? That would be like finding gold and then handing a map to the neighbors showing its location.”
Buffett told investors that Berkshire is a safe place to park their cash as long as they don’t expect the “eye-popping performance” of its past because there are no attractively priced acquisition targets out there big enough to make a meaningful difference in the Omaha, Nebraska-based company’s results. But he said Berkshire will be ready to swoop in with its $167.6 billion whenever the casino-like stock market seizes up.
Investor Cole Smead of Smead Capital Management said Buffett is reassuring investors that “we’ll be ready to buy things when things finally get rational” while warning about the dangers of Wall Street that “is like a denizen of thieves, and they’ll sell you what they can sell you.”
Munger, Buffett’s longtime investing partner, died in November at age 99 — taking away one of the key sounding boards Buffett relied on over the decades as Berkshire acquired companies like See’s Candy, Geico insurance, BNSF railroad and others to reshape the failing textile mill they took over in the 1960s into the massive eclectic conglomerate Berkshire is today.
Buffett already devoted part of last year’s annual letter to Berkshire shareholders to a tribute to Munger, but this year’s version led off with even more praise for the revered curmudgeon’s contributions to Berkshire over the years. Buffett said “Charlie was the ‘architect’ of the present Berkshire” who realized early on that it was better to buy wonderful businesses at fair prices.
“Charlie never sought to take credit for his role as creator but instead let me take the bows and receive the accolades,” Buffett wrote. “In a way his relationship with me was part older brother, part loving father. Even when he knew he was right, he gave me the reins, and when I blundered he never – never – reminded me of my mistake.”
