Warren Buffett

New Berkshire Hathaway letter is out.  Free insight and humor for capitalism’s cheery uncle, a great read every year, even if I understand at most 1/12 of it.

Sunny American optimism:

The infectious, enthusiastic amateur style of writing reminds me of Bill James:

Some of the companies Berkshire owns:

9.3% of your Coke is Berkshire’s.

An unlikely hero:

Jack Bogle founded Vanguard, and created a simple, low cost index fund for everyday investors.

found that at JL Collins impressive website.

Buffett tells you, in simple terms, how to get rich:

Why people don’t do that:

On the other hand here’s the S&P 500 chart since 1980:

Doesn’t look like a washtubs moment to me.

Over at marketplace.org, Allan Sloan points out some of the things Buffett leaves out:

Allan Sloan: Two things are missing. One was how wonderful the management of Wells Fargo was, which he wrote the previous year. The second thing is he lavished praise on this company called 3G, what’s known as a private equity company, from Brazil, which manages a company called Kraft Heinz, which is Berkshire Hathaway’s biggest investment. And what it does is it goes around, it buys companies — now with the help of a lot of financing from Berkshire Hathaway — it fires zillions of people, the profits go up, and then after a while, it goes out and buys another company and does the same thing.

Buffett makes me think of Andrew Carnegie, a zillionaire of a hundred years ago who also had some kind of public conscience.  If some percentage billionaires weren’t also lovable characters like Buffett, would capitalism collapse?  Does his dad humor, like Carnegie’s library building, plug a dyke that holds back revolution?

At the Berkshire Hathaway shareholders conference, you can challenge table tennis champ Ariel Hsing: