Billionaire Warren Buffett talked about the banking crisis, AI, Apple and a number of other hot topics Saturday at Berkshire Hathaway Inc.’s
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annual meeting, but there was one quip that may have been his best investing advice.
When asked a question about how the rise of disruptive technologies — such as AI — may affect Buffett’s favored strategy of long-term, value investing, Buffett replied: “What gives you opportunities is other people doing dumb things. During the 58 years we’ve been running Berkshire, I would say there’s been a great increase in the number of people doing dumb things — and they do big dumb things. And the reason they do it, to some extent, is because they can get money from other people so much easier than when we started.”
“ “What gives you opportunities is other people doing dumb things.” ”
“Investing has disappeared so much from this huge capitalistic market that anybody can play in, but the big money is in selling other people ideas,” the 92-year-old “Oracle of Omaha” said. “They’re trying to outsmart each other in arenas that you don’t have to play.”
“The world is overwhelmingly short-term focused,” he added. “I mean, that is a world made to order for anybody that’s trying to think about what you do that should work over five or 10 or 20 years… I would love to be born today, go out with not too much money and hopefully turn it into a lot of money.”
Buffett’s right-hand man, Vice Chair Charlie Munger, 99, was less optimistic, saying “value investors are going to have a harder time now that there’re so many of them competing for a diminished bunch of opportunities. My advice to value investors is to get used to making less.”
“Charlie and I have always differed on this subject,” Buffett said. “He likes telling me how gloomy the world is. I like to tell him ‘we’ll find something,’ and so far we’ve both been kinda right.”
But as technology advances, “there will be plenty of opportunities,” Buffett said.
