Everyone will please take their seats. Yeah. This is my, this is my sixtieth annual meeting, and and it's the biggest, and I think it'll be the best yet. And, I would, before I start, I'd like to give you a few figures from from, yesterday because we set all kinds of records. Yesterday, we had 19,700 people that joined us in the afternoon between noon and 05:00, and that was up from 16,200,
which was a previous record the year before. And in every aspect, we set records. Sees Candida did $317,000 against 283,000 the year before. And most of these were limited by capacity. I mean, there were there were lines there throughout the total day. Brooks did 310,000. Those was all time records sales say for them, and I think they have close to 3,000 runners lined up for Sunday, which is a lot of people to get up. And that I I think we've we've had 2,200
or 2,400 before, but but 3,000. And, that doesn't count me, and it won't count me. And, I could go up and down the line jazz jazz wars, around 250,000, double the previous years. They they just sell as fast as they can sell. Sell. Most of most every every place had had, had, people lined up at the, at the cash register sometimes. They're a lot longer away than wish we had, but but we'll learn the game eventually. And it goes on and on. Every every every company set records.
And, and, there's no way of knowing how many people we have here. Today, we have people listening in around the world, but, I think we're setting we'll probably set records in a great variety of ways. And, I would, we're going to have in a minute, we'll get to the question and answer, but I'd I'd like to first introduce our directors. And and, I'm I'm Warren Buffet, and I was born and bred right here in Omaha. We have Greg Abel. He was born and bred in Canada. And we have Ajit Jain, who was born and bred in India.
So we we have a very diverse group. And, in the audience, and I will introduce them alphabetically and if they'll stand as I introduce them. And and, I know it'll be an effort, but withhold your applause till the end so that, so that we can get through the list. But we'll start alphabetically, with Howard Buffett. Hawaii would you stand and, withhold the applause and go to his head? Susan Buffett. We have Steve Burke, Ken Chenault, Chris Davis, Sue Decker, Sue's our lead director, Charlotte Diamond, Tom Murphy Junior,
Ron Olson, and I'll have a few. And when we finish, I'll have a few more things to add about him. Wally Weitz and Meryl Whitmer. And with that, you've got our all star cast. And, Ron, if you don't mind standing, I would like to point out that that, Ron, they finally got through an age director thing at at Berkshire. I think we had five that were over 90 here not so long ago, but, but we put in the highest, Sue tells me anyway that it's the the highest age, limit that any any of the companies she checked out came up with.
But, Ron has been on the board for twenty eight years and, been associated with Charlie Munger at Munger Tolles for many years beyond that and has been around A variety of times of crisis and joy and disappointments and surprises and everything else at Berkshire and has been a very valuable help to us. So I think I think I'd like to give a special hand to Ron Olson. And, I think I'll do something else that isn't done usually at annual meetings,
but I I haven't had a chance. I listened to him on Thursday, afternoon. I it's the only it's the only it's the only investment quarterly call that I listen to, but, I listen to Tim Cook, and I understand. It'll be tough for me to see him from up here, but Tim Cook, there he is. I'm somewhat embarrassed to say that Tim Cook has made the Berkshire a lot more money than I've ever made Berkshire Hathaway. So I it, credit credit should be given to him for, I knew Steve Jobs briefly, and Steve,
of course, did things that nobody else could have done in developing Apple. But but, Steve picked out Tim to succeed him, and he really made the right decision. Steve died as young as you know. And, nobody but Steve could have created Apple, but nobody couldn't. But but Tim could have developed it like it has. So so on behalf of all Berkshire, thank you. There's a couple other people I'd like to thank. I don't do any work in terms of the show or anything else around Berkshire, but, what you see today,
is a product of a lot of people at Berkshire. They forget, you know, that they don't think of themselves as the one who's supposed to screw a light in and leave for somebody else and specialists to come along and do other things. The people of Berkshire put on this this show every year. And, you know, our our our chief financial officer and just everybody pitches in. It's a remarkable organization that way. But it's led this year, in the last few years by Melissa Shapiro,
and she's made this whole thing work. Melissa. And then we got an idea a while back. Well, many years ago. Well, I'll take it all the way back. Maybe, sixty five years ago, I met, Harry Silva's grandfather and, his wife. Well, they had nine children. And Susie and I joined a a, playhouse group. And I don't look like the kind of guy that would join a playhouse group, but it turned out to be a great a great move in many ways. First of all, I enjoyed the place.
But beyond that, I met not only, not not only Carrie's grandfather who ran an insurance company in Omaha, Bill Kaiser, but I, also met, the pumpkin boy's parents, Louis and and Frances. So in in one sort of accident, when I was in my twenties, came up with all kinds of good things. And in connection with Carrie, her father ran a company called, Central States. And later on, we bought that company. And then her father ran the company. Her sister
went to work for Berkshire some years ago, and then, she decided to have a family and subsequently had four kids, so she left. But Carrie moved right in, and Carrie, had amazing talents behind just like a good many people do. They they they they have, talents you don't you don't realize still. You give them some responsibility. And so, ten or eleven years ago, I asked Carrie to do a fiftieth anniversary book about Berkshire and just use her imagination. And and she never she didn't need to check with me or do anything.
She just she never edited the book. She never published the book. She never dealt with the printers before, but she just went out and promptly put together this fiftieth anniversary book. And then this year, well, then Carrie, of course, got married and had three kids. So she she had to leave us, but but, and we have a we go to a baseball game once a year, and we invite some of our distinguished alumni like Carrie to join us. And, Carrie, even though she was raising three children,
and you may have met one or two of them, in the last day or so, she volunteered to bring bring together a sixtieth anniversary book and, which I I asked for. And, again, she took the whole thing. She just did it. She kept doing the things with her kids. And every now and then, she'd I'd ask her how it was going, and she'd tell me how it was going. And so she put together the sixtieth anniversary book. And, got it done by, you know, maybe a week before the meeting because I I gave her the assignment very late.
And, yesterday, we sold, I think it was 4,000 plus, four to 4,500 maybe. We we 4,400. We printed 8,000. We intended to print 5,000, but so we sold 4,400 books yesterday. And, well, I have 30 I guess, roughly 3,600 left out there today. And it's kind of a whimsical and but but accurate. And, she came out with just the book I hoped she would come out with. And, and then as we went through,
this publishing experience, Carrie wouldn't take a dime, but I did get her to name her, favorite charity and Stevens Center, which takes care of homeless people, and does a great many other things. It's located about five or six miles from where we are here south, has been doing a wonderful job. Her grandfather helped form it. Her husband's now joined the board, and we're selling 20 copies of, this is a commercial place, isn't it? We are selling, 20 copies that,
we sold 10 prior to the meeting. That's all we let them sell. And we raised a few hundred thousand dollars doing that. I think we sold one for a hundred thousand dollars, and But we limited it at that to 10. And the only difference in them, these and the $25 version is that, Carrie and I signed them. But we saved six for yesterday, and the six brought a hundred and $48,000 which is a pretty good average per book of about 20 odd thousand dollars.
And I then I had them save four more. So, this afternoon when we disband at 01:00, the, area right behind us that has all the goods in it in bookstore, They will sell the final four, and when we get all through, I'll match whatever we've raised for the the 20, and, and we'll give the, Stevens Center a a boost both in financially, but also in awareness. So anyway, that and when you look at that book, Carrie really did the whole thing. I mean, there's a lot of information in there.
She dug through it, and and she came through a couple of times maybe to check a fact or two. But she she she got all she got material from the Munger family. She just she just did a wonderful job. And and and, I I I couldn't get her to take a penny for it. So I'm gonna ask her to do a lot of other things in the future. Okay. With that, I think we've we've covered all the the business. So, we will move to Becky. There's questions that she's received from my I don't know how many she's received,
but from all over the, country and perhaps outside the country. And she's picked out a group of them, which, she has not shared with me. And, we will alternate questions between Becky and, the audience, which we have by zones. And and and with that, I will turn things over to Becky for the first question. Thanks, Warren. This first question comes from Bill Mitchell. I received more questions about this than any other question. He writes, Warren, in a 02/2003 Fortune article,
you argued for imports of certificates to limit trade deficits and said these import certificates basically amounted to a tariff. But recently, you called tariffs an act of economic war. Has your view on trade barriers changed, or do you see import certificates as somehow distinct from tariffs? Yeah. Well, the import certificates were distinct, but they they their goal was to balance, imports against exports. And so that the trade deficit would not grow in an enormous way.
In fact, it would have and it had various other provisions in it to to help, third world countries at that time, as they were called, to perhaps catch up a little bit. And they they had a variety of aspects to them, but basically, they were designed to balance trade. And, I think you can make some very good arguments for the fact that balanced trade is good for the world, and the more balanced trade there is, the better. It will continue to be better for cocoa to be raged in Ghana and coffee
and Colombian a few things. And and over time, the, American industry has gone from being an agricultural country. This was this was nothing but an ag country. I mean, virtually, and that was only two hundred and fifty years ago. And we have become a very industrial country, and, we did not wanna make that a situation, in my view, where we ran greater and greater deficits building up greater and greater debts against the country. So I I designed this,
import certificate thing, which, Charlie thought was a little rube. Too much like Rube Goldberg. I don't know whether that time name is but it's it's gimmicky. But, it's certainly a lot better than anything, I I think, than we're talking about now. And there's no question that trade trade can be an act of war. And, and I think it's led to bad things. Just the attitudes it's brought out in The United States. I mean, we should be looking to trade with the rest of the world, and we should do what we do best, and they should do what they do best. And,
I don't think it that's that's what we did originally. I mean, we were good at producing tobacco and cotton, two hundred and fifty years ago, and we and we traded it. And, we want a prosperous world, with eight countries with nuclear weapons, including a few that are what I would call quite unstable, I do not think it's a great idea to try and design a world where a few countries say, we've won. And, other countries are envious. So so my my my import certificate idea,
which went no place, I think we got extra copies, roughly, but not a great demand for the copies. If anybody did and if you'd like and write the office, I think we could we could probably send you a copy of it. But the main thing to do is not use trade should not be a weapon. And The United States The United States, we've won. I mean, we have become an incredibly important country starting from nothing. Two hundred and fifty years ago, there's nothing that anything like it. And
it's a big mistake in my view when you have seven and a half billion people that, don't like you very well, and you got 300,000,000 that are crawling in some way about how well they've done. And, I don't think it's right, and I don't think it's wise. I do think that the more the more prosperous the rest of the world becomes, it won't be at our expense, The more prosperous we'll become and will and the the the safer we'll feel and your children will feel someday. So that's But don't ex don't expect my import certificate idea to go to up down there
with Adam Smith's qualifications or anything. Okay. Let's go to area one. Mister Buffett, mister, Abel, and mister Ching, good morning. Hi. I'm s t Chung. I'm from Hong Kong. Mister Buffett and mister Munger did a very good and successful investment in Japan in the past five or six years. The recent CPI in Japan is currently above 3%, not far away from its 2% targets.
Ban of Japan seems very determined in raising rates, while Fed, ECB, and other central banks are considering to cut them. Do you think BOJ, Bank of Japan, makes sense to proceed the rate hike? Will its planned rate hike deter you from further investing Japanese stock market or even considering to realize your current profits. Thank you very much for arranging this greatest event every year.
Finally, I wish you healthy always, and keep holding this shareholder meeting. Thank you. Well, I'm gonna extend the same goodwill to Japan that you've just extended to me. I I I, all the people of Japan determine their best course of action in terms of economics. It's it's an incredible story. And, five it's been about six years now as you pointed out. I was just going through a little handbook. It probably had two or 3,000
Japanese companies in it. One problem I have is that I can't read that handbook anymore. The the print's too small, but, the, and there were these five trading companies. They have a special name for them in Japan, but they were selling it ridiculously low prices. And, so I spent about a year acquiring them, and then we got to know the people better. And everything that Greg and I saw, we liked better as we went along. So we got fairly close to the 10% limit that we we told the company
we would never exceed without their permission. And, so we did ask them recently whether that limit could be relaxed and it's in the process of being relaxed somewhat. We I I would I would say that I'll speak for Greg beyond me that I'll in the next fifty years, and I hope he's running things then, We we won't give a thought to to selling those. I mean, they had, and, Japan's record has been extraordinary, actually, in terms of that, my guess is that Tim would tell you Tim Cook would tell you that
iPhone sales are about as great as any country outside The United States. American Express would tell you that they sell their product very, very well in Japan. Coca Cola that we do business with another big investment of ours, they do extraordinarily well in Japan. They have a number of habits in, in the civilization that operates differently than ours. Japan is by far the biggest. They this is the container they've always preferred. They're soft drinks, and and they have, they have a whole different sort of distribution system there.
But we have been treated extremely well by the five companies. They they they talk with Greg private primarily. I went over there a year or two ago, but, Greg Greg's Greg's more cosmopolitan than I am, so he he's a which isn't saying much, actually. But, Very little. But he is I I don't know. How many times do you think you've met with representatives of one company or the other? Yeah. When you think of the five, there's definitely a couple meetings a year, Warren. And I think the thing we're building with the five five companies is,
one, it's it's been a very good investment, but we are really as Warren touched on, we we envision holding the investment for fifty years or or forever. But I think we also are building relationships to do incremental things with each of those companies. And we really do hope to do big things with them, globally. They bring different perspectives and different opportunities, and we see and that's the, that's why we're building that long term relationship with them. It's super long term. And and and they have a much they have a they have different customs.
They have different, approaches to business. That's that's true around the world. And and, we're not we we don't have any intention in any way of trying to change what they've done because do because they they do it very successfully. And, and our our our main activity is just to is just to cheer and clap. And, and that I can still do it 94. So, we will own those. You know, we we will we we will not be selling any stock.
I mean, that is just it's that that that won't wanna happen in in decades if then. And I my guess is that they will find things because they cover the world pretty much, the five trading companies. We will find things occasionally that may be very large for any individual company there. They may, in some way, be assisted by some some help we bring to the situation. But but that will be an expanding relationship. It's too bad that Berkshire has gotten as big as it is because we love
that position, and I'd like it to be a lot larger than than it is. But even with the five companies being they're very large companies, and they're large companies in Japan. And we've got that market that that you know, in the in the range of $20,000,000,000 invested, but I'd rather I'd rather have a hundred billion than 20,000,000,000, and that's the way I feel about it. Several other investments we have, but, size is an enemy, of performance at Berkshire, and I don't know any good way to solve that problem,
but but, Charlie always told me that having a few problems was good for me. I never quite understood that, but he if if you listen to him moralize, you would understand. And and and it's not an impossible problem at all. It, and the Japan the Japan investment is it's just been right up our alley. You wanna add anything on that, Greg? No. I think, you've touched it, but, as you said, it's right up our alley, and I I absolutely agree, Warren. I I do believe we'll see some very large opportunities long term.
Sure. And that and that's just been a great plus of that that relationship. Yeah. Yeah. I would say that they they wanna they would like to present us with opportunities. We would like to receive them. We've got the money. We both get along well very well with each other. And they have different they have some different customs than than we have. They drink the number one Coca Cola product. They drink over there something called Georgia Coffee. So, I'm I'm I haven't converted them to Cherry Coke, and they're not gonna convert me to Washington and Georgia coffee.
But it's, it's a perfect relationship. I just wish we had could get more like it. And I never dreamt of that when I picked up that little wasn't so little. It was about that thick, but sometimes two companies to a page and and a couple thousand pages, I believe. But it's amazing what you can find when you just turn turn the page. We showed a movie last year that, about turn every page. And I would say that turning every page,
is one important ingredient to bring to the investment field. It, and very few people do turn every page, and the ones who turn every page aren't going to tell you what they're finding. So you you gotta do a little of it yourself. Okay. Becky? This next question comes from Advait Prasad in New York. He writes, today, Berkshire holds over $300,000,000,000 in cash and short term investments, representing about 27% of total assets, a historically high figure compared to the 13% average over the last twenty five years.
This has also led Berkshire to effectively own nearly 5% of the entire US Treasury market. Beyond the need for liquidity to meet insurance obligations, is the decision to raise cash primarily a derisking strategy in response to high market valuations? Or is it also a deliberate effort to position Berkshire's balance sheet for a smoother leadership transition, providing Greg Abel with maximum flexibility and a clean slate for future capital allocation decisions? And I will add one line from another shareholder,
Mike Conway, who asks, are you encouraged you may see some fat pitches coming your way? Yeah. Well, I wouldn't do anything nearly so noble as to withhold investing myself just so that Greg could look good later on. Now if he if he gets any edge when I leave, I'll resend it. So the, now the the amount of cash we have is, we we we would spend we came pretty close to spending 10,000,000,000 not that long ago, for example. But we'd spend a hundred billion. I mean,
and and and but those decisions are not tough to make. When when something is offered that is that, makes sense to us and that we understand and, offers good value and where we don't worry about losing. And the the one problem with the investment business is that things don't come along in an orderly fashion, and they never will. I mean, it isn't like every day. The, you know, the the long term record is sensational, but that is not a product.
And I've been in see, I've had, two hundred trading days, tons, Eighty years on yeah, man. Because it you have sixteen million trading days, and that we kind of, I mean, sixteen thousand trading days. It it would be nice if every day you got four opportunities or something like that and, you know, you could and they were expected to be equally attractive. You know, if I if I was running a numbers record, you know, every day would have the same expectancy of that I would keep
40% of whatever the handle was. And so the only question would be is how much we transact it. But we're not running that kind of a business. And so we're running a business which is very, very, very opportunistic. And, Charlie always thought I did too many things. He thought if we did about five things in our lifetime, we we didn't we could, we'd end up doing better than if we did 50 and and, and that we never concentrated enough. So that we would rather have, if we've got 335,000,000,000 now in charges,
we would rather have conditions that are developed where we would have, like, 50,000,000,000 or something like that. But that that just isn't the way the business works. And we have made a lot of money by not wanting to be fully invested at all times. And, we don't think it's improper, actually, for people who are passive investors just to make a few simple investments and sit with their life, sit for their life and, but we've made the decision to be in the business. So, we think that we can do a little better than that
by behaving in a very irregular manner. But if you told me that I had to invest, well, let's say that we have a roughly 40,000,000,000 a year coming in, and we start with $3.35. If you told me I had to invest 50,000,000,000 every year till we got down to 50,000,000,000, that would be the dumbest thing in the world to invest in that manner. Things get extraordinarily attractive very occasionally. The long term trend is up. Nobody knows. And, I certainly don't know. Greg doesn't know.
Ajit doesn't know. Nobody knows what the market is going to do tomorrow, next week, next month. Nobody knows what business is gonna do tomorrow, next week, or next month. But they spend all their time talking about it because it's it's easy to talk about. And, but it it it has no value. I I never found anybody I wanted to listen to on the subject. And, the on the other hand, I found that leafing through things like that big Japanese book that I can't read anymore. The, that's that's a trigger on. And every now and then,
you find something. And occasionally, very occasionally, but it'll happen again. It, I don't know when. It won't it could be next week. It could be five years off, but it won't be fifty years off. You will have we will be bombarded with offerings that that, we'll be glad we have the cash for. And it'd be a lot more fun if it would happen tomorrow, but it's very unlikely to happen tomorrow. Very, very unlikely to happen tomorrow. But it's not unlikely to happen in five years, and then it gets probabilities get higher as you go along.
It's kinda like death. I mean, if you're 10 years old, the chances that you're gonna die the next day are are low. Get to be a 15 or something like that. It's almost a cinch, particularly if you're a male. I mean, all the records are held by females in terms of age. And I I tried to get Charlie to have a sex change so he could test off. But, he did pretty well for being a male. I'll put it that way. Okay. Station station two. Good morning, Warren, Greg, and Ajit. My name is Jackie Han. I'm from China and now work in Toronto,
Canada. This is my eighth Berkshire Hathaway meetings at this point. I've probably spent more time with you than most people spend on Netflix. As you might guess, coming from a Chinese family, we've always had a soft spot for real estate. So the Euro question isn't why don't you own a house, it's why are you still buying stocks instead of more property. So here is my question. With today's high interest rates and global uncertainty, do you still believe in being greedy when others are fearful or the value investing
facing new challenges in today's environment? Thank you. Yeah. Well, in respect to real estate, it's so much harder than stocks in terms of, negotiation of deals, time spent, the involvement of multiple parties in the ownership usually when when when when real estate gets in trouble, so you find out you're dealing with more than equity holder. But there have been times when large amounts of real estate, have changed hands at bargain prices. But usually, stocks were cheaper, but they were a lot easier to do. So Charlie did more real estate Charlie enjoyed real estate transactions,
and and he actually did a fair number of them in the last five years of his life. But he was, you know, he was playing a game then, and it was an interesting game too. But I think if he you'd asked him to make a choice when he was 21, he had to either be in stocks exclusively the rest of his life or real estate the rest of his life. He would have chosen stocks in a second. And the there's just so much more opportunity, at least in The United States. There's so much more opportunity that presents itself
in the security market than it does in real estate. And in real estate, you're dealing with a usually dealing with a single owner or a family that owns maybe a large property they've had a long time. Maybe they've borrowed too much of money against them. Maybe the population trends are against them. But but to them, it's an enormous decision. When you walk down to the New York Stock Exchange, you can do billions of dollars worth of business totally anonymous, and you can do it in five minutes. And the trades are complete when they're complete. In real estate,
when you make a deal, a big deal with a distressed lender, it you know, when you sign the deal, then you go into another phase. I mean, then people start negotiating more things and more things, and it's it's it's a whole different game. And a different type of person, to some extent, enjoys the game. We, we we did a few real estate deals that came our way in 02/1989. But but see, the amount of time that they would take us compared to doing something intelligent and
probably better, in securities. There was just no comparison. I mean, in a real estate deal, every every sentence is as important as a person and and in stocks. If somebody needs to sell 20,000 shares of Berkshire or something and they call us and the price is right, it's done in five seconds. And and it closes all the time. It, people who you certainly wouldn't wanna have married your daughter or, they behave well, actually, in in in in stocks. Partly that's because they're they're probably having their their,
wires or phones or whatever it is, recorded as to what they've said and everything. But but the the completion rate for working on anything in stocks is if assuming you're got a meeting of the minds on prices, essentially a % in real estate. It just begins when you agree on deals and that they they take forever. So that for guy 94, it's it's not it's not at the most interesting thing to get involved in something where the where the negotiations could take years.
And we we have the capability. There have been some huge failures in in in in fact, it it, if you go all the way back to Zeckendorf in the nineteen sixties, he was gonna change the world, and Century City out in California is a product of his. And and if you go to, Uris, if you go to he was sitting on top of the world with the Uris buildings. And so people tend to get in trouble in that business. The banks usually don't wanna recognize it, but that takes a long time to go through the through the bank processes.
They just got through redoing the Moscow loan that he made that when he was buying it three years ago, the company that's now X. And, you know, three years to work out a transaction that, or you've got parties on both sides that aren't ready to act, then we find it much better when people are just ready to pick up the phone, and you could do hundreds of millions of dollars worth of business in a day. I've been spoiled, but I like being spoiled, so we'll keep it that way. Okay.
Becky. This question comes from Sam England in San Francisco, and and it's for Warren and Ajit. As AI systems become more capable and harder to interpret, how do you see that affecting the insurance industry's ability to assess price and transfer risk? Are there parallels to past disruptions Berkshire has navigated in underwriting or capital allocation? Okay, Becky. And he's got about a hundred points of IQ on me, and he's just gonna be here this morning. So I'm gonna let him answer the question first.
Well, there is no question in my mind that AI is gonna be a real game changer, and it's gonna change the way we assess risk, we price risk, we sell the risk, and then the way we end up paying claims. Having said that, I certainly also feel that people end up spending enormous amount of money trying to chase the next new new fashionable thing. We, are not very good in terms of being the being the fastest or the first
mover. Our approach is motivation, see until the opportunity crystallizes, and we have a better point of view in terms of risk of failure, upside, downside. So right now, the individual insurance operations do dabble in AI and try and figure out what is the best way to exploit it. But we have not yet made a conscious big time effort in terms of pouring a lot of money into this opportunity. And my guess is we will be in a state of readiness. And should that opportunity pop up, we'll be in a, state where we'll jump in promptly.
Yeah. And I would just add, I wouldn't trade. I wouldn't trade everything that's developed in AI in the next ten years for for g. So if you gave me a choice, that gave me a choice of having a hundred billion dollars available to participate in an insurance property, casualty insurance business for the next ten years, and a choice of getting the top AI product out of whoever's whoever's developing it or having a g making the decision. I would I would take a g at any time.
And I'm not kidding about that. Okay. Station three. Hello. I'm Sean Siegel from Chicago, Illinois. Thank you for investing your time to you and the executive committee for putting on this meeting and for bringing together a diverse group of people in attendance under one roof. Out of all the companies that Berkshire Hathaway owns, there was one that you acquired, the Chicago based company Portillo's Hot Dogs. How did you know that this would be a good fit for the overall company's
portfolio? Well, I'll have to ask Greg about that because I don't know anything about it. So maybe he bought it when I was looking the other way, but I think I gotta call a friend on this one. Yeah. I I, I we we own a lot of companies, but I do like to think I know most of them. But but the, and and maybe a subsidiary of a subsidiary in some way, but but I I really don't know a thing about it. I'm sorry to Yeah. That that may be a good thing. I do know something about hot dogs, though. Sorry. And and we do have a lot of companies in Chicago, Warren Yeah. Through Marmon.
And it that's been a great opportunity where we've accumulated a variety of, excellent companies under that portfolio. But as you noted, I don't believe Portillo's falls under that. Yeah. No. I I look at I I look at the financial statements of about, yeah, perhaps 50 or 60 of our companies, every every month. But in the case of Marmon, for example, Marmon itself owns over a hundred companies. And, Yeah. It was it, it was the creature of it was created by Jay Pritzker
and, and his brother, Bob. And it was a remarkable company when we bought it. But it but it was highly diversified already, and then we've diversified it further. So it is it is something of a Berkshire within Berkshire. And, we found we found that that's working very good as arrangement. It was interesting. Jay Pritzker was a, remarkable manager, and there's various branches of the Pritzker family. So you'll it's it's really goes back to a n Pritzker before Jay and so on.
But in in 1954, they changed the federal tax code very dramatically in The United States. It was quite a blow to me because I've been at Columbia, and I've been reading a JK Lasser book about the tax code, and then they went and changed the whole damn thing. So I it did. But '54 was a big year, big change. Those years come every now and then, like 1986. And, and you may see a big one one of these days. And there was a company called Rockwood
Chocolates in in, Brooklyn, And they made rock with chocolate bits, which we used to sell at the buffet grocery store, and people made chocolate chip cookies out of them and everything. And, then it turned out that cocoa, which lately has had a big run too, Cocoa was 5¢ a pound in 1941 when LIFO was first allowed for for insurance for for for tax purposes. And the Rockwood Chocolate Company went into on the LIFO message. So they they owned, like,
30,000,000 pounds or thereabouts of cocoa. And then cocoa took a run-in 1955, and I just moved to New York. And, there was a provision in the new tax code that if you were in two or more companies, and you did certain things and you've been in them for five years and you got out of one of them, that there would be no capital gains tax on LIFO inventory gains. And tax rates were around 48%, maybe 52%. And so you there was this huge profit because because,
the cocoa had gone up in price, but that made it terrible for them in selling liquid chocolate bits because the price of retail of the of the chalk. Events did not match what was going on at wholesale. Something almost identical has been happening in the chocolate business. Recently, Hershey chocolate just came out and said they're going to have a bad quarter, and we're paying $4.50 a pound for chocolate to from cocoa because things are going on in West Africa that that make,
cocoa prices go up dramatically. In any event, Jay Pritzker bought control of Rockwood, the chocolate company. And like I say, I was 24 or five years old, and they called the meeting to split off the two, one one of the chocolate businesses in a way that would enable them to to recognize the gain on this these cocoa beans without paying 50% roughly 50% federal taxes on the gain. So I went to the meeting, which was in Brooklyn,
and nobody was there. This is in the turn every page category except one guy. And I was 24, and he was 29, and it was Jay Pritzker. And nobody had showed up at the meeting, and it was kind of a crummy building they had. But they had a lot of corporal there. And Jay just gave me a lecture, or a a lesson really, I should say, on on the tax code. And I made it with that. I I could have gone to graduate school for years and never learned as much as he did. And then later, we actually bought the company, that Rockwood company after he did some other things,
became the basis for Marmon. And Marmon, among other things, developed the car that, won the first Indianapolis Speedway race. And, it invented the rearview mirror, which, I'm not sure is a great great advantage in economics or anything, but but, the guy that would they used to have on the Indianapolis five hundred, they had two people in the car. One guy was to look back and see what the other people were doing, and the other guy was to drive the car. And our guy got sick. And, so they invented a rearview mirror.
So if you wanna look at the kind of, you know, what's going on in the laboratories of Berkshire Hathaway and we we've got people working on things like the rearview mirror. Hey. Hey, Warren? Yep. I'm happy, a friend did call. So that's that's still works. Peter Eastwood who runs, one of our Berkshire subsidiaries and does a great job of running it, tracked down that Portillo's is owned by a private equity firm called Berkshire Partners. So that was the basis of the question, but it's not associated with,
with Berkshire. So we got we got to the bottom of that one. Yeah. Thank you, Peter. That's just a sample of the way we operate around for trucking. Okay. Becky. Alright. This question comes from Jessica Poon who says, you've long been a strong believer in the American tailwind and the resilience of The United States, and history has proven you correct. Today, The US appears to be undergoing significant and potentially revolutionary changes. Some investors are now questioning the concept of American exceptionalism.
In your view, are investors being overly pessimistic about The US economy, or is the country indeed entering a period of fundamental change that requires a reassessment from a new perspective? Well, I would say that, Jessica, who I believe is that some of this is she is the step granddaughter of one of our managers that I I mentioned in the annual report may not be the same one. But in any event, America's been America's been insignificant and revolutionary change, really, ever since it was developed.
I mentioned that, you know, we started out as an agricultural society. We started out as a society with with high promises, and we didn't deliver on it very well. We we said all men were created equal, and then we wrote a constitution and said, blacks get three counted as three fifths. And and in article two, you you'll find male pronouns used 20 times and no female pronouns used. So, you know, it took till February I mean, yeah, February and
or 1920, I should say, until the nineteenth until the nineteenth amendment was passed saying, oh, yeah. We promised the women this back in 1776, and now we'll do something about it. And then we didn't do something about it for a long time. So we're always in the process of change. We'll always find all kinds of things to criticize, in the country. But the luckiest day in my life is the day I was born. You know, because I was born in The United States. And at the time,
about three percent of all the births in the world were taking place in The United States. And, I'd like to say that I had something to do, you know, listen. Sent messages out to my parents for God's sakes and moved to The United States before I born or anything. But, no, I was just lucky. And I was lucky to be born male. I was lucky to be born white. That was like, all kinds of things. But it's been if you don't think The United States has changed since I was born in 1930, it's been we've gone through all kinds of things. And gone through great recessions. We've gone through world wars.
We've gone through the development of an atomic bomb that that, we never dreamt of, you know, at the time I was born. So I I would not get discouraged about the fact that that it doesn't look like it. We've solved every problem that's come along. And, if I were being born today, you know, I I would just keep negotiating in the womb until they said you can be in The United States. So it, we're all pretty lucky. Do you wanna give any we've got two non United States guys here just to get the other side. Who now live in The US?
Okay. Station 4. Hi, mister Buffet. My name is Daniel, and I'm from Tenafly, New Jersey. First of all, I just want to say how grateful I am for getting the opportunity to ask you a question. When it comes to your principles of investing, you often talk about how important it is to be patient. Has there ever been a situation in your investing career where breaking that principle and acting fast has benefited you? Thank you. Well, that's a good question. And, there are times when you have to act fast. In fact, we made a great deal of money because we're willing to act faster than anybody
around. Jessica Toombs is I think she's the stepdaughter of of, or step granddaughter of Ben Rogers, a manager of ours. And in 1966, I got a call from a fellow named Paul Steiner in New York, and he said I I represent, missus Annenberg. And there were there were actually nine Annenberg sisters, I believe, before Laura Annenberg came along as the son. But he said, we have a business we'd like to sell you. So I called Charlie up,
and, I got a few details, and it sounded very interesting. And, Charlie and I went back to the office of Will Falsdiner in New York, who was a marvelous guy. Never met him since, but but, he was handling things for missus, well, Ace Ace, I mean, but she her name was Annenberg. And her husband had been the partner of of Ben Rosner, but he had died. And and then got kind of tense about working with her. And so he, offered us his business at a bargain price. He offered us a business for $6,000,000
of that 2,000,000 in cash. It had a $2,000,000 piece of property in the 900 Block of of, what's the key street in Philadelphia down there? Market Street. And, and it was making 2,000,000 a year pretax, and the price was 6,000,000. And Charlie and I went back to this place. And, Ben Rosner was there, and he really he just was upset about doing business with his his partner's widow. He was she was extremely wealthy, and, and he just didn't he wasn't enjoying it. He was very nervous about selling it. And he he said to me and Charlie,
he said, he said, I'll run this business for you until December 31, and then I'm out of here. And I've got Charlie. We went out in the hallway, and I said, if this guy quits, at the end of the year, he can throw away every book on psychology I've ever read. I mean, he and so that began a wonderful we bought the company. Had a great relationship. And did I know that morning when I got a phone call? Will Falsteiner did this background about it. I've I've had a couple of times, and that was one of them where people in the East
felt that they had a a a stereotype in their mind of what people from the Midwest were like. And, Ben had been married. His first marriage was to a woman from Iowa, and he just figured that anybody from the Midwest was okay. And, the trick when you do it, you know, when you get in a business with somebody, they were getting a room with somebody like that, and they wanna sell you something for $6,000,000 that's got 2,000,000 in cash and a couple million real estate and just maybe 2,000,000 a year. You don't you don't wanna be patient then. You wanna be patient then waiting to get the occasional call.
My phone will ring sometime. Yeah. And, with something that, you know, wakes me up. I may be sleeping in there or something, but it it you just never know when it'll happen, and that's what makes it what makes it fun. I mean, it it it, so patience it it's a combination of of of patience and a willingness to do something that afternoon if it comes to you. You don't wanna be you don't wanna be patient about about acting on deals that make sense,
and you don't wanna be very patient with people that are talking to you about things that'll never happen. So, it's it's not a it's not a constant asset. It's not a constant liability to be patient. Greg, you Well, Warren, I was gonna add, as you're being patient, I I happen to know, and I think that goes for our, Ajit also and all our managers, very patient when we're looking at opportunities. And as you touched on, we want to act quickly. But while we're being patient, never underestimate the amount of reading and work that's being done to be prepared,
to act quickly. Because we we do know, be it equities, but I would include a variety of of private companies that when the opportunity presents itself, we're ready to act. And and that's a large part of, being patient is is using it to be prepared. Yeah. And and, of course, it it doesn't come in anything. I can even flow. I mean, there are most uneven sort of activity you could get into. And, the main thing you have to do is you have to be willing to hang up after five seconds,
and you have to be willing to say yes after five seconds. And Absolutely. And, you can't you can't be filled with self doubt in the business. You just forget it. It isn't gonna work. It, come to some other activity. But you also I mean, one of the great pleasures it is the great pleasure actually in this business is having people trust you. And that's that's really the why why work at 90 when you've got more money than anybody could count? You know, if they started today and having machines that are helping them and everything else.
And and and that it means nothing in terms of of, how you're going to live or how your children are gonna live or anything else. And, but it it it and but both Charlie and I, we just enjoyed the fact that people trusted us, and they trusted us sixty years ago or seventy years ago. And and and partnerships we had, and we never sought out professional investors to join our partnerships. Among all of my partners, I never had a single institution.
I never I never wanted an institution. I wanted people, and I I didn't want people that were sitting around having people present to him every three months and and tell him what they wanted to hear and all that sort of thing. So and and that's the way we got them. That's why we've got this group here today. So it it's all worked out. But that it it's you don't wanna be patient when things are going your way. When when the time comes to act. Yeah. You you wanna get it done that day. Okay.
Becky? This question is from Flavio Montenegro, a shareholder from Guatemala. A Couple Of Years ago in this meeting, Mr. Jain outlined the significant challenges GEICO faced in modernizing and integrating its IT systems. It was also mentioned that competitors were ahead in their pricing strategies because of the use of telematics. Today, GEICO's turnaround is evident through strong pricing and operational improvements. Could you provide more details on the specific actions taken under Todd's leadership and how those changes will help sustain a long term competitive advantage in the coming years?
Yeah. Todd has done a great job for us in terms of turning around the operations. When he took over, there were two major issues that GEICO was behind its competitors on. Firstly, the term we Warren used and we all have been using is matching rate to risk, and secondly, telematics. We were at the bottom of the list, and so far as telematics are concerned about five, six years ago. Since then, we have made rapid strides, and telematics, which used to be a source of
the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the by 20,000 starting with something close to 50 or thousand. He's brought it down to 20,000, and that translates to, I guess, at least $2,000,000,000 per year. So all this has allowed GEICO to become a much focused competitor.
So much so in the last seven quarters, GEICO has shown a combined ratio that has a eight in front of it. And I never thought I'd live to see the date when anyone could have a combined ratio at so low as it is right now. So I think GEICO has done a great job. It's 80 combined translates to the the largest profit anyone is making on the underwriting side in the personal automobile business. So, you know, we've achieved a lot. Todd has achieved a lot, but I do not want to be so arrogant as to say that mission accomplished.
We've achieved a lot, but I still think we need to do a lot more in technology. AI, as we talked about, is gonna be a big force, and we need to play catch up there. Not catch up, but we ought to be in a state of readiness. So I think GEICO is in a great shape right now. Warren, you want to add anything? No. I it's it's it's a fascinating case study, but and that's what's so interesting about the whole game of business, but particularly about our businesses, is that that each one is a little different.
But they're all they all have challenges of certain sorts and but they also many certain numbers have opportunities. We we paid $50,000,000 for half of GEICO in nineteen seventies. '6, what turned out to be half of GEICO. Fifty million. Fifty fifty per no. A %, but 50% of 2,000,000,000 that we earned in the first quarter is a billion dollars, which on a $50,000,000 investment is, you know, 20 for one and a quarter. So it
you know, it takes years to develop. But the interesting thing is the auto insurance policy, which didn't even exist a hundred years ago I mean, you you you didn't it just well, I should say a hundred and twenty years ago. But the it's it's by far the largest item in the property casualty insurance business. It's it's huge. The only thing I'd like to add is in addition to the underwriting profit, GEICO provides $29,000,000,000 afloat. Oh, yeah. In addition. Yeah. And and that's not unimportant. When you paid $50,000,000
to get the businesses, it's giving you $29,000,000,000 to work with for nothing. And on top of that, gives you billion dollars of of profit and a quarter. The interesting thing about auto insurance is that that we're the company was started in 1936. We're selling the same product as 1936. We're we're being more sophisticated about pricing it than we were then. Somebody just made the judgment. The fellow that came from USAA, made the judgment that that government employees the name GEICO stands for government employees insurance
company. The government employees were better drivers than average. And, I'm I don't think he was an actuary or anything else, but he just made an observation. And, so he left USAA, which is still a very successful company. And he started GEICO for a few hundred thousand dollars. And he made money the first year for my my underwriting. He made money the second year. This is not a public offering type thing to or, you know, use phony accounting for ten years and all that sort of thing. They just price it to make money. And, that's exactly what's been done since 1936.
The policy really you know, your insurance your auto insurance policy looks a lot like the one that you had done. And this huge field has sprung up, around us and still growing. And and, of course, nobody likes to to buy insurance, but they sure like to drive. And and and, GEICO is it's a fascinating story. And about three times over the years, the company has gotten sidetracked one way or another. And, and then it gets back to its basics, and and it's a wonderful,
wonderful business. And and, we showed at this annual meeting one time a a message from Lorimer Davidson. And Lorimer Davidson in in January of nineteen fifty I was the only person in the building that, I'd gone down on on a Saturday to visit, but turned out they didn't work on Saturdays in Washington. And I pounded on the door till finally a janitor let me in. And I said, there's a janitor. Is there anybody else I can talk to here except you? And he didn't take it personally,
and he said, oh, there's one guy with the Sixth Floor. And a fellow named Lero Ormer Davidson did wonderful things for me. You you get a few breaks in life in terms of people you will meet who just change your life dramatically. And if you if you you need a handful of those, and, and when you get them, you treasure them. And we've had them on on this board of Berkshire. We you know, if you take Tom Murphy and Sandy Gottesman and Walter Scott and Bill Scott.
We we the one thing we've done is we've held on to to human assets. We've made lifelong assets out of people that that are the right sort and, with incredible talent, but also just lots of fun to work with and always doing more than they share. And, you know, to get a chance to talk to Lorimer Davidson on a Saturday afternoon, you just listen carefully. And that comes in the in the category of turn every page.
You know? Some of them you wanna turn pretty fast, but but, you just get lucky in life, and you wanna take advantage of your luck. Okay. Station five. My name is Benjamin Graham Sanderson from Pasadena, California. Warren, thank you for all you've taught us over the years. Earlier, you said nobody but Steve Jobs could have created Apple, but nobody but Tim Cook could have developed it like he has. Warren, nobody but you could have created Berkshire, and I presume you view Greg as an outlier among outliers. But he seems so normal.
Sorry, Greg. Yo. That's a nice way of saying it's not normal, actually, but I appreciate it. So I was hoping you could share what specifically about Greg makes him your preferred successor. And, Greg, we're excited to get to know you more over the next few decades. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Well, you you've hit on the most important question. And now in terms of the business, we've got a wonderful group of businesses. We've got a we've got an ability to do things that nobody else can do, which is hard to get it in the capitalist existence that's been developed as fully
as as as United States has been. I mean, imagine being able to create something that and then a very, very, very big playing field. You know, you'd really be very, very hard to develop anything like that. I don't think you could develop the people around it, let let alone the capital position, you know, and the history and everything else. And the answer, of course, is that it it does take a a long, long time, and it takes getting around you a small
cadre of people which then spreads out somewhat. But, where you've got mutual trust, where people do more than their share. And I've been around a lot of businesses over the years. And by nature, I'm somewhat critical of everything. I mean, I that's I'm looking for what's wrong in things because that's part of investing is is looking, you know, what aren't you what are you missing? But we have, you know, we've got people that if they're asked to put on a show like this instead
of doing whatever their regular job is, they they participated. I went around the groups of people that were exhibiting yesterday for an hour and a half, and these are people who are thanking me, you know, and totally enthused about coming and doing a lot of work for which they don't get paid anything extra. And I I don't know anything about the arrangements the individual companies make, but they they work hard, and they enjoy their work. And, you know, you really wanna work at something you enjoy. I've always had I've had five bosses in life,
and I liked every one of them. And they were all interesting. I still decided that I'd rather work for myself than anybody else. But but if you if you find people that are wonderful to work with, you know, that's the place to go. And I've I've told my kids that basically, that you don't get lucky like I did when I found it. Seven or eight years of age, what really interested me. You know, it could have taken a lot longer, but but, you want to
find the song. It's it's find the sound as, there's a movie called The Glenn Miller Story, and Glenn Miller went on from having a broken down band for fifteen years to, you know, turning out the first he found the sound and and, and created the first gold record. I don't know whether I any of you know what it was, but it was the Chattanooga choo choo in 1941, I think it was. And he turned around from being a a nothing in with the band that he had till he found the sound.
And, I always have told my kids ever since that their their their sound isn't my sound. You know? But and you don't find it necessarily on the first job you take because you gotta eat. You know? And but if you get lucky like I did, you you find it to be you find it when you're very young. And then, you know, just keep doing it, and, and don't worry don't worry too much about starting salaries, and don't worry about about,
be very careful who you work for because you will take on the habits of the people around you. So there's certain certain jobs you shouldn't take. And, but you've got the greatest country in the world, and you got the greatest time in the world. So, I would say that that, while I while I'm handing this over to Greg at, that, you know, you can't even dream all the dreams that you could have about a place like Berkshire, but big thing you have to do, though, is always is to be sure you can play the next day. I mean,
in terms of in terms of financial activities on a meaningful scale, you know, you you don't wanna go you know? There was a a book above what was the name of that book? You only have to get rich once. I mean, you don't you don't wanna do anything that risks, what's been created. So you don't you know, if if very stupid things are happening around you, you do know and not wanna participate. If people are making more money because they're borrowing money or they're participating in in securities that are really pieces of junk,
but but, but they they hope to find a bigger sucker later on. You just have to forget that. Yeah. It, that that'll bite you at some point. And and the basic game is so good, and you've been so lucky to be born now. I mean, if if I've been born in 1700, I'd say, I wanna go back in the womb. What the hell with this? It's just too hard. And but now I've come along to do something where I can just play around all day with things I enjoy doing. And, and, it's really,
it's a it's a pretty wonderful life. I mean, Greg, you wanna add or subtract from that? Nothing to subtract, but, I I would always just say it couldn't be more, as I've said in the past, more humble than honored, obviously, to be in this role. But to to have actually been part of Berkshire for Warren, it's now twenty five plus years, had the opportunity to be part of Berkshire and to work with you and Ajit and our board but many other people in our company. And as you touched on, when you find something like that and you find something like that, like Berkshire that's so special,
it's you fall in love with it, and it's it becomes just what you wanna do every day, and it's just an incredible opportunity. So thank you. And then the gentleman who asked the question, if if you don't find it immediately, you know, don't starve to death or anything in the meantime. But but, you will find it. And and and you'll you'll find it in in the right individual in in the sense. It's somewhat like finding the right person in marriage. I mean, and probably the first some of you married may have married the person you made met
on your first date. Although, I guess they don't even have dates anymore. But but the, but, you know, it's it's, sometimes it pays to wait too. Okay. Becky. This is a question from Mark Bonnke and Helen Friedrichson in Rapid City, South Dakota. As the US dollar quickly loses value in relation to other foreign currencies in 2025, is Berkshire Hathaway taking steps to minimize this currency risk and its impact on quarterly and annual earnings? If so, please explain. And I'll I'll just add from Mary Chang,
another shareholder. Berkshire currently borrows in Japanese yen to offset its currency risk and its Japanese stock investments. In the future, will you invest in foreign currency denominated assets unhedged? Yeah. Well, we always have, pretty much. The Japanese situation is different because we we do intend to stay so long with that position, and the funding situation is so cheap that, we essentially have attempted to some degree to to to match purchases against the end denominated
of funding, but that's not a policy of ours. In fact, that's the first time we've we've we've done that, and and we've owned lots of securities of, of of in in foreign currency. So, we do nothing in in in terms of the question about its impact on quarterly and annual earnings. We don't do anything based on its impact on quarterly and annual earnings. I mean, there's never been a board meeting. I can remember what I or a conversation I had with Charlie when I said where I say,
if we do this, our annual earnings will be this, you know, and therefore, we ought to whether it's accounting or whether anything, we just you know, the the the number will turn out to be what it'll be. What counts is where we are five or ten or twenty years from now. And and if you start focusing on what number you're going to produce, you will quickly get tempted, at least based on the experience I've seen from viewing 20 companies. You will get so you'll, one way or another, play around with the numbers and sometimes seriously play around with the numbers.
And, I've seen people that that you know, I trust them in all kinds of other ways, but they regard playing around with numbers as perfectly okay. And that's just not something, you know, we just don't think about that. So, actually, The the end, relationship with the end behavior of the end in the last quarter, you know, result in certain gap charges and, but it doesn't make it it doesn't make any difference. It'll change next, you know, next month or next year.
And and, obviously, we wouldn't wanna be owning anything that we thought was in a currency that was really going to hell. And that's the big thing we worry about with The United States currency. I mean, it's the the tendency of a government to wanna debase its currency over time is there's no system that beats that. You can pick dictators. You can pick representatives. You can do anything. But but the people there there will be a a push toward weaker currencies. And, of course, that is I mentioned very briefly in the annual report that the fiscal policy is
what scares me in The United States because it's it's made the way it is. And, and, all the motivations are to doing a lot of things that will cause can cause trouble with with money. But that's not limited to The United States. It's all over the world. And some places, it gets out of control regularly as I know. They know they know they know know they devalue it, rates that are breathtaking, and that's con that's continued.
I mean, people can study economics, and you can have all kinds of arrangements. But in the end, if you've got people that control the currency, you can you you can issue, paper money and you will, or you can engage in clipping currencies like they used to centuries ago, or there will always be people. It's the nature of their job. I don't I don't I'm not singularly them out as particularly evil or anything like that. But the natural course of government is to is to make the currency worth less,
over time. And, and it's got important consequences. And it's very hard to build checks and balances into the system to keep that from happening. And, we've had a lot of fun here in the last well, either the first hundred days or the last hundred days, whatever you wanna call it. The, watching what happens when people try to make sure that they aren't running fiscal risks. And, that game isn't over and and never will be over, you know, in finality. If you look
if you look up in in search, the great inflations of post World War two, it's just the list that goes on forever, and the same names keep popping up and everything. So currency is the value of currency is a scary thing. And and, we don't have any great system for beating that. We do in this particular Japanese position because we expect to hold it for fifty or a hundred years or more. And we will be owning something that's denominated in yen and easily predictable,
and we'll just as long as the the carry on it is right and everything, we'll we'll, we'll attempt to issue Japanese denominated liability release. But that that's not because of anything we carry about in terms of quarterly or annual earnings. Greg, do you have anything to say on? I was just gonna say that, relative to the question that there's no question we were fundamentally very comfortable with investing in the five Japanese companies and recognizing we're investing in yen. Japanese companies and recognizing we're investing in yen. The fact we could then borrow in yen was almost just like a nice incremental
opportunity. But we are very comfortable both with the Japanese companies and with the currency we would ultimately realize, I e, in the yen. Yeah. We we only made, as I referred to earlier, one big currency play, which was connected a little bit with when I wrote that article for Fortune. And we got along 12 other currencies, as I remember, only four or five of them are really big currencies. But when when I say we got long, that means we're short the dollar. And, so we held that position for a couple years,
and we we made several billion dollars on it, which was significant to us then. So is, the, Charlie always felt that if if he had to pick an area outside of stocks in which to invest and he knew a lot about bonds. He knew a lot about real estate. He knew a lot about a lot of things. But he he said he he thought he could he he thought he could make a lot of money out of being in foreign currency. But, we just we've done it once. It's not inconceivable we would do it again,
but it's unlikely. But there could be things happen in The United States that would make us wanna own a lot of other currencies. And I I suppose if we if we made some very large investment European country or some, there might be a situation where we would do a lot of financing in in their currency, but it's it's not a it it it was something that just was sort of obvious to do in the Japanese situation where we had the ability to
borrow Vienna very, very low carrying cost. And, and we felt very good about the income we'd be receiving from these securities, and we and if the present condition, which it won't, I mean, it never does, but prevail for decades and decades, we would probably keep doing the same sort of thing. But things change in the world too, so don't take that as a prediction. Okay. Section six. Good morning, Warren and Greg, Ajit. Thank you so much for hosting this event. Good to be here.
My name is Dash Boyu Undeger, and I'm from great country of Mongolia. A little bit background about my country. Mongolia is an emerging market and landlocked country sandwiched between Russia and China, But we are reaching history and minerals and have full democracy and growing economy. Last week, we hosted our second annual Mongolia Investor Conference in New York to attract investors like
yourself. I know you meet and give advice informally to government leaders such as South Korea, China, and India. What advice would you give to government business leaders of emerging markets like Mongolia to attract institutional investors like yourself? It'd be great if you have long term plans for exposure to emerging markets as a hedge or an opportunistic investment. Lastly, I welcome all of you to Mongolia,
and my country folks would be very happy if you can make it to our economic forum this July. Oh, thank you. Yeah. I I have trouble planning a trip to Council Bluffs, which is just a few miles from here, but it takes an optimist. Actually, I met a fellow here at the annual meeting, oh, probably twenty years ago or more, who did a lot in Mongolia. And, it's he's he did very well in Mongolia and, actually moved there for quite a while. I would say that if you're looking for advice to give the government over there,
it's to develop a reputation for for having a solid currency over time. I mean, that we we we don't really wanna go into any country where we think that there's a chance I mean, a significant probability of runaway inflation. It just it's it's too hard to figure. People the other people have figured out ways to make money in in hyperinflationary situations. But, that's not our game, and I I I don't think I'd play it well. So, we wouldn't be with that that would be that would be a factor with us.
The chances are we won't find anything in Mongolia that fits our size requirements aside from that. But but like I said, I've had, I think my friend that I met here twenty years ago has done very well in in, Mongolia. And if if the country develops a reputation for being business friendly and currency conscious conscious. You know, I think that that bodes very well for the the residency the residents of that country, particularly if it has some other natural assets that,
it can build around. I don't know that much about the minerals there or anything of a sort, but but, I mean, who would have been on The United States in 1790? But, we we we didn't we didn't have to have perfection. We just had to be better than the other guys for quite a while. And we started out with nothing, and we ended up with close to 25% of the world's GP, and faster growth rates, and generally sounder currencies, and all kinds of things. But, so, I wish you well. Okay.
Becky? This question is from Peter Shen in New Jersey. It's for Mr. Buffett and Mr. Jain. In recent years, large private equity firms like Blackstone, Apollo and KKR have aggressively expanded into insurance, raising permanent capital, managing float and aiming to replicate the model that Berkshire pioneered decades ago. Given that these firms are now directly competing for insurance assets, often using higher leverage and more aggressive investment strategies, how do you view their impact on Berkshire's insurance operations and underwriting discipline?
Do you believe that the private equity model poses risks to policyholders in the broader financial system? And has this competition made it more challenging for Berkshire to find and price insurance opportunities safely and profitably today? Ajit? Okay. Yeah. Part of the question is very easy. There's no question the private equity firms have come into this space, and we are no longer competitive in this space. We used to do a fair amount in this space, but in the last three, four years, I don't think we've done a single deal. Now you are to separate this whole segment in two separate segments.
One is the property casualty end of the business and the life end of the business. The private equity firms that you mentioned are all very active in the life end of the business, not the property casualty end of the business. You are right in identifying the risks in these private equity firms are taking on both in terms of leverage and in terms of credit risk. And while the economy is doing great and credit spreads are low, these the private equity firms who've taken the assets from very conservative
investments, and I won't say high octane, but they've certainly invested these assets in situations where that where they get a lot more, return on the investment. And as I said, as long as the economy is good and credit spreads are low, they will make money. They'll make a lot of money because of leverage. However, there is always a danger that at some point, the regulators might get cranky and say, you know, you're taking too too much risk on behalf of your policyholders, and that could end in tears. We do not like the risk reward that these situations offer,
and therefore, we put up the white flag and said, you know, we can't compete in this segment right now. Yeah. I think there are people that wanna copy Berkshire's model, but usually they don't wanna copy it by also copying the model of the CEO having all of his money in the company forever. And, I mean, they they've got a different equation. They're they're interested in and and, you know, and that's capitalism. But they have a whole different, situation, and then they probably have a somewhat different fiduciary feeling, about what they're doing. And,
and sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't work. And if it doesn't work, they go on to other things. And if I what we do here at Berkshire doesn't work, I spend the end of my life regretting what I've created. So it's it's, it's just a whole different personal equation. And, there is no property casualty company that can basically replicate Berkshire. That that wasn't the case at the start. I mean, at the start, we just had national indemnity a few miles from here, and anybody could have duplicated what we had. But,
but that was before a g. And and the g came with us in 1986, and and at that point, the other fellow should have given up. Yeah. Station seven, please. Hi. My name is Marie. I'm from Melrose, Massachusetts. Thank you for the time today. As a young person interested in investing like myself, I would love to hear your insights, Mr. Buffett. What were some pivotal lessons you learned early in your career? And what advice do you have young for young investors who are looking to develop
their investment philosophy? Thank you. Well, those are good questions. I wish I thought of them myself earlier in my life. The, you know, who you associate with is just enormously important. And don't expect that you'll make every decision right on that. I mean, but you you are going to go into you're going to have your life progress in the general direction of the people that you that you work with, that you admire, that become your friends.
I mentioned a few fellows that that died in the last couple years. Well, all of those people were people that that that that, you know, if we were working together on something one ten thousandth of size of Berkshire, I mean, they'd be the kind of people you choose. You just they're they're people that make you wanna be better than you are. And you wanna hang out with people that are better than you are and that you feel are better than you are because you're gonna go in the direction of the people that you you associate with.
And, and that's that's something You learn and, of course, you learn it late in life then. That, you you, it it's hard to really appreciate how important some of those factors are until you get much older. But when you've got people around you, like Tom Murphy and and my like, well, like, his name of Sandy Gottesman at Walter Scott. You're just gonna live a better life than than, you do if you just go out and look at somebody just making a lot
of money and decide you're gonna try and copy him or something of the sort. So I would I would I would try to I'd try to be associated with smart people too where I could learn a lot from them. And I would try to look for something that I would do if I didn't need the money. I I mean, what you're really looking for life is something where you've got a job that you'd hold if you didn't need the money. And I've had that I'm sure I had it for a very, very long time. In fact, all the fellows I named, had it. And, and they also every one of those ones I named,
they always did more than their share, and they sought they never sought more than their share of the credit. They just behaved as the way you'd you'd like anybody you you work with. And when you find them, you treasure them. And and when you don't find them, you still keep doing whatever causes you to eat, or enables you to eat. But, but you don't you don't give up on on looking around, and you will find you'll find people do wonderful things for you. I mentioned I mentioned, earlier the, you know, going down to GEICO and knocking on the door when the door was locked.
I mean, who knows what was behind that door while I went in? But but, you know, in ten minutes, I found that I had a man that was gonna be just wonderfully helpful to me. And of course, if somebody's gonna be helpful to you, you wanna try to figure out ways to be helpful to them. So you get a compounding of of good intentions and good behavior. And, unfortunately, you can get the reverse of that in life too. And, and, you know, with a lot of I I was lucky in having a a good environment for
living that kind of a life. And and other people, you know, have a whole different environmental situation. They have to overcome it. But don't be don't feel guilty about your good luck if you've got if if, you know, if you've got, well, if you live in The United States, you, you know, you you you've you've, there are 8,000,000,000 people in the world, and there's 330,000,000 in United States. You've already won the game, to a great degree, and then just keep making the most of it. But, you you don't wanna you don't wanna
associate with people or enterprises that ask you to do something that or tell you to do something that you shouldn't be doing. And, that's one of the problems. I mean, different professions select for different types of people. And, there's it's it's interesting to me that in the investment business, so many people get out of it after they've made a pile of money. That that it it you really want something that you'll stick around for, you know, whether you need the money. Craig doesn't need the money, or she doesn't need the money,
remotely. And they but they enjoy what they do, and they're so damn good at it. It's it's, you know, it just well, I've had the the advantage of seeing how that works over time. They're the best manager I ever knew, and there's a lot of contention for who that would be. But actually, it was Tom Murphy senior that, who lives in the almost 98. And, I've never seen anybody that can get the potential out of other people, more than than, Murph could. I mean, if if if if you wanted to if you wanted to become a better person,
you want to work for for Tom Murphy. And, there are all kinds of successful people that that really don't have that sort of don't bring that to the party. And and, I'm not saying that's the only way to succeed, but I think it's I think it's the most pleasant way to succeed for sure. And, and I think that that, you know, the the Berkshire experience is pretty dramatic. I mean, to to operate with Sandy Gottesman from 1963 until he died a couple years ago.
And, Walter Scott for thirty years and played operated with him for twenty five years or so, whatever it was. Yeah. Thirty. Yeah. And and, you know, you you really can't miss. It's, you know, you you'll learn all the time, but you'll you'll not only learn how to be successful at business, you'll learn how to be successful at life. And, so that's that's that's, my recommendation. And and and for some reason, I apparently, you live longer too because pretty amazing. I mean,
these people I'm talking about, including myself, I mean I mean, you know, I mean, you can I like to attribute it to this and a few other things, but I I I think a happy person lives longer than somebody that that that's doing some things that they don't really admire that much in life? Okay. Let's move on to I guess, it's Becky next. The first quarter ended March 31 and it did show that Berkshire's cash pile expanded from the end of the last year, but the greatest market turmoil came in April. Martin Devine,
a shareholder from Scotland, who is attending the meeting today wants to know, has the recent market volatility presented Berkshire with opportunities? And Martin just wrote in an addendum in the last forty minutes or so, pointing out that you mentioned Berkshire almost invested $10,000,000,000 recently, wanting to know if you could talk more about that. Well, then, I can give you a good answer to the second part, which is no. But and the but 10,000,000,000 wouldn't have done that much. You know? That that's the other side another side of it. What has happened in the last thirty, forty five days,
hundred days, whatever whatever you wanna pick up, whatever this, this, period has been, is is is really nothing. There's been three times since we acquired Berkshire that Berkshire has gone down 50%, in a very short period of time. Three different times. Nothing was fundamentally wrong with the company at any time, but but this is not a huge move. The Dow Jones average at $3,381 in September of nineteen twenty nine.
It got down to 42. So that's by going from a hundred, to 11. This is not this is not a dramatic, bear market or anything of the sort. I mean, it it it you know, I'd like to point it out if I've I've had two hundred and fifty trading days a day, you know, for however many years I've been old enough to trade stocks. I've got seventeen or eighteen thousand days. There's been plenty of periods that that, just are dramatically different than this. I mean,
when the day I was born, the Dow Jones was at February. And my first that was 08/30/1930. And between that and the low, it went from 02:40 to 41. I mean, that's so if people think that it made a really major change, it it didn't if it if it gone up 15% instead of down 15%, people think they take that with remarkable grace. But, but, if it makes a difference to you whether your stocks are down 15% or not, you you need to get a somewhat different investment philosophy because the world is not going
to adapt to you. You're gonna have to adapt to the world, and you will see a period in the next certainly in the next twenty years, you'll see a period that that that will be in what somebody in the market described one time as a hair curler compared to anything you've seen before. I mean, that's just it just happens periodically. The world makes big, big, big mistakes and surprises happen in dramatic ways. And the more sophisticated the system gets, the more the surprises can be out of right field.
That's that's just that's part of the stock market. And that's what makes it a good place to to focus your efforts if you got the proper temperament for it and a terrible place to get involved if if you get frightened by markets that decline and and get excited when stock markets go up. I don't mean to sound particularly critical. I mean, I know that and and people have emotions, but you gotta check them at the door when you invest. Mhmm. Okay. Station eight, please. Good morning,
mister Murphy, mister Rick and mister Ajay. My name is Peter Chen. I'm from Shanghai, China. This is my first time attending this shareholders meeting. I would like to ask a question about the wisdom of life. Have you ever encountered any major setbacks or an or lower points in your life? And how did you get through and overcome them? Thank you very much. Well, everybody gets setbacks, and, and some people have particularly bad luck in that respect when others get through with
fairly minors. But Charlie, you know, but, he had setbacks. I had setbacks. I mean, it it it's it's part of life, and, and they're not any fun. I don't have any great advice for you about about, you know, having time of your life while you're having some major setback. But but, it it, you know, it it comes with lifetime. You know? But you certainly have a setback when you die. And so everybody's got that setback guaranteed to them. And, but some people get and I mean, it it isn't a laughing matter in a sense because,
I mean, people get extraordinary bad luck, and other people get extraordinary good luck. Usually, the people who get good luck don't really think it was so much luck as themselves, but but you're just going to have it. I think you're going to I think that you're less likely to have it in terms of medical problems, in terms of, you know, various things in life. I mean, you were born at a good time. I mean, you look all the way through the history of China, when when would you rather have been born? You know,
a hundred years ago, five hundred years ago, a thousand years ago, or now? You know, it it it's just hands down. You'd be lucky. I mean, you know, if if I came from 20 generations of shepherds, I I I think I get kinda tired of, you know, my life just looking at these sheep every day. But, you know, we can sit here, and I can I can watch Nebraska not quite play the same game of football that we played twenty years ago? But but, I mean,
everything in life has been made so much better, that you've gotta figure that you do a lucky store straw by, you know, staying in the womb for a couple hundred thousand years and then just emerging at at the right time. So I would all I would focus on the things that have been good in your life rather than than than than the bad things that happen. Because bad things do happen, but but, it it it it's, it it it it can often be a wonderful life. You could get terrible breaks in it.
I mean, you know, it, so far, that really hasn't happened with neighbors. It's happened with some of my friends. But they get some bad breaks, from time to time. But for 94, I've been able to drink whatever I wanna drink and get on there. They they predict all kinds of terrible things for me, but it hasn't happened yet. So yeah. And it's true. I mean, if you look at what pro football players are making now and everything compared to what they were making thirty or forty years ago, you can say, well, isn't that wonderful? But if you look at the if you look at the lifespan of professional athletes,
after a while, you get used to you really decide that you're better off if you if you really weren't weren't the first one chosen to be on the baseball team or the basketball team or anything, anything else, the human body. Well, Charlie and I and I think I speak for the others to some extent that and we we never did we never really exercised that much or did anything. We were we were carefully preserving ourselves for So, well, look at the bright side of things to the extent that you can.
And that, and, you know, you're lucky enough to you're you're here today. You're healthy. You're you've come from a long distance, and and, and you're getting a chance to learn more about something that interests you. And, compare that with the situation come couple hundred years ago that you would have been offered. So, anyway, that's enough moralizing. Okay. Becky? This question comes from Himanshu Bandal for Ajit and Warren. Autonomous vehicles are already driving across roads in American cities with no driver involvement.
How do Warren and Najee think about any disruption risk from these autonomous vehicles to GEICO's auto insurance business, which is built around understanding and underwriting human drivers? Wouldn't what we call auto insurance today just become product liability for autonomous vehicles and autonomous software companies? Well, Ajit? Yeah. There's no question that, insurance for automobiles is gonna change dramatically once self driving cars become a reality. The big change, that we will see is what you identified.
Most of the insurance that is sold and bought revolves around operator errors and how often they happen, how severe they are, and therefore, what premium we already charge. To the extent these, new self driving cars are most safe and are involved in fewer accidents, that insurance will be less required. Instead, it'll be substituted by, as you mentioned, product liability. So we at GEICO and elsewhere are certainly trying to get ready for that switch
where we move from providing insurance for operator errors and be more ready to provide protection for product errors and errors and omissions in the construction of these automobiles. Yeah. We expect expect change in all our businesses. And, good thing we did. And Charlie pushed me into it, but but, if I'd settled for being in New England textiles, you know, and even though it worked well for seventy years or so prior there too, you know, the the world changes.
And and if the game didn't change at all, it really would be very interesting. You know? It's, if every time you if you ever every time you, you know, swung at a baseball, you hit a home run, the game wouldn't be interesting. If every time you hit a golf a golf ball, you had a hole in one, it wouldn't be interesting. So and the fact that there will be things you have to think about all the time as you go along, and you'll make mistakes and all that. And that that's really part of the fun. I mean, that that that your your your brain would turn to mush if you didn't have
a few problems now then. So, I I, you know, auto insurance will change, although it's remarkable how little it has changed. But it's only been around since, you know, for a relatively small time. And who knows what we're doing to move in transportation a hundred years from now? If you go back a couple hundred years ago, who could have predicted The United States would look like what it does, and people would move like they do, and people would enjoy themselves like they do. And, I mean, it's just it it it's it's an it's a dynamic world.
And the biggest thing we have to worry about, unfortunately, is that that, we've learned how to destroy the world too in in in in recent years. And so we've got this wonderful world, which now we we know that there are eight countries that and probably a ninth coming on that can destroy. And and, and we don't have what I would consider the necessarily the perfect people leading each one of the nine or or some of the nine countries. And, you know,
when Einstein came up with the equals MC squared back in nineteen o five. He, he didn't dream of the fact. I mean, that that energy could really be converted. Or, mass could be converted into energy and the way that we change the world. When I was born in 1930, they had known about the law of physics that that Einstein had come up with. Twenty five years earlier. Nobody, to my knowledge, had thought, what can this do to change, warfare in the future? And literally, it just wasn't thought. Einstein didn't think about it at at that point.
And, and then in 1939, Roosevelt got a letter around oh, a month before Germany moved into Poland, and then we got around August 1. It's the most famous letter in history from from, Leo Szilard. Leo Szilard couldn't get his letter in front of Roosevelt because whoever heard of Leo Szilard, but but he got Einstein to sign it. And, Roosevelt probably understood about as much about physics as I do, so he he didn't understand it, but he understood that Einstein decided. So he calls in, General Verdeliver, may not have been General then,
and said, we should do something about this. And all we did was learn how to destroy the world. And, we needed to do it. And, Germany had a Heisenberg, and he looked like he was he was ahead of us. And, we can't put that genie back in the bottle. And it's the world does change, and we've got all these one we've got wonderful things, but but we also have, you know, we have a guy in North Korea. If you if we criticize his haircut, he you know, who knows what he might decide to do with?
What does what does North Korea need? Need, nuclear weapons for? I mean, it, that cannot be a good thing in the world, but they're not gonna go away. So, it's it's it's a world of change, and we are enjoying incredible change that's contributed to everybody in this room living so much better than people were living a couple hundred years ago. But we haven't been able to to avoid we haven't changed human beings very much so far. We've we've certainly changed weapons of mass destruction, and and,
but we haven't made much progress with the human race and what and, we'll see what happens with that. But in the meantime, we'll see changes in auto insurance too and cars. And and that that will be be more in it'd be easier for us to deal with it than it was when we had to deal with the problems of of turning out textiles in New England. And, you know, you deal with the world as it develops. And like I say, everybody here is living in the luckiest period, but but but,
you know, enjoy your luck. And, and and you still try to figure out the answers to what's gonna happen Yeah. In auto insurance as we go along, and we've we've done pretty well actually adapting to the answers. There's a few big problems in insurance, and, I don't know how the insurance industry adapts to them particularly, but but that makes the game interesting. You really don't you wouldn't wanna go out and play golf if you don't you're gonna hit the ball in the hole, on every hole. I'd just like to add, we talked about the shift to
product liability into protection for accidents that take place because of a error in terms of how the product was designed or supplied. The only thing I want to add is in addition to this that shift, I think what we'll see is a major shift where the number of accidents that take place and need to be provided for will drop dramatically because of automatic driving. But on the other hand, the cost for repair every time there's an accident, the cost of repairing and bringing everything back to where it used to be would
go up very significantly because of the amount of technology that's going into the, into the car. How those two variables interact with each other in terms of the total cost of providing the insurance, I think is still an open issue. I'll give you two interesting figures to ponder. When I walked into a guy goes off in 1950, the average price of a policy was around $40 a year. It varies all over the lot depending on location, everything, but but, it's pretty easy to get up to $2,000
and depending on how urban your areas are and, everything you get considerably higher. During that same time, the number of people killed in auto accidents, have fallen from roughly six per hundred million miles driven just a little over one. So the cars become incredibly safer, and it costs 50 times as much down or thereabouts to buy insurance policy. So, when people talk about the developments in car driving and all that sort of thing.
It's a lot easier sometimes. I mean, the the Buck Rogers aspect of it, people look at it, but they don't actually think of what really happens to the math of the business. The insurance auto insurance industry has been a huge growth industry. And for that matter, homeowners insurance prices in Nebraska have doubled in the last ten years, adjusted for general inflation and, convective storms. You know, it just gone on to terror, and it's still unprofitable. We're right home homeowners insurance in Nebraska after doubling the price in the last ten
years. So it's very hard to predict what these big changes mean, and you just got to keep thinking all the time. But you don't wanna read some research report that says the world's coming to an end, or the world's gonna be wonderful because of this or that. Because there's about 50 other developments going on at the same time that you, that you need to think about. That, and that you needed to keep observing as you go along. You don't you never reach an answer in this business. You reach a point of action that you take. But but but,
we try to get into as high probability things as we think we do and play the game in the same way. But but it will be different than you think. And and you should wake up every morning and think about that too if you're if you're in the business of of managing businesses. Hey, Warren. As we approach the break, would you like to address the operating earnings Oh, yeah. First quarter? Yeah. Let's put up the we released our 10 q this morning, and, we always try to do it on a Saturday so nobody gets a jump on other people.
And we we just have three simple, chart. You'll see that, our insurance underwriting income was down dramatically for the first quarter. And last year was as good a year as you'll see in insurance that, and it's always unpredictable insurance, but everything broke our way, or the insurance industry's way last year. Prices are down this year. Risks are up this year. So you don't have to be a genius to figure out what the answer is
on that. So, but we have we do have unusual advantages in the insurance business, that can't really be replicated by our competition. Chop it. But we I wouldn't talk about our insurance business as much as I do unless I really thought we had some really permanent advantages in a very, very large industry. We just announced within the last twenty four hours that we in Zurich and Shovep have arranged a joint operation to be the,
writer of of really large sums that that very few people can do. And, of course, we gotta write about the right price in terms of liability, but but we can do that sort of thing without blinking. And anybody that wants to do it wants to get us in it. I mean, it, so anyway, in our investment income, did not change that much because we have a float that grows a little bit, which gives us more money for investment, and then we have retained earnings, which grows. So we would expect in any year to have,
like, 40,000,000,000 or more that that we'll build up investments unless we find things, to do with it. So the investment income rates on treasuries are less than they were or short term bills, I should say, are are less than they were before. So you had that negative effect pulling it down, but not that much, and we had more money. So we came up with a little more in the way of earnings. The railroad is earning a little more than than last year, but it's not earning. But it it it it should be earning at the present time,
and but that that's solvable and, and and is getting getting solved. And it's it's still an incredible asset for Berkshire. The energy company last year was having particular problems, and those were absent this year, so those earnings are up. And, and then, among our range of general businesses, they were pretty much a push. And I think I think you did little calculation the other day on how many were up and how many were down. Did you get the right Yeah. Of our, 49 that we measure closely,
twenty twenty one were up and 28 were down. So you can tell it was really a a mixed quarter when you go go across, the operating the non insurance operating businesses. Yeah. The next slide. I'm getting a five minute warning here. And, the, before the long ball now, the, shows our financial condition, which continues to hold a lot more cash and treasury bills than I would like, but I but that's simply a question of when opportunities occur.
And and if you get real opportunities every five or six years, you're you know, you have to be patient. Charlie always pointed out that we made most of our money out of about eight or nine ideas over fifty years. And and we talked about it every day, and we read every report, and we did everything else. But but if you think you can get an idea a day from listening to your Frederic book or or doing a lot of reading of the of the financial information published or,
forget it. Because every now and then, you get extraordinary opportunities. And most of the time, you don't have much of an edge. So, we also have on that thing our float, which continues to build. I don't think any con. There's no company that has property casualty company that has our full reserve achievement. Yep. Clearly, we are headed towards above anyone else. Yeah. It, so that is money that as long as we're writing it in an underwriting profit, is absolutely free money. But, and and we would expect that over a fifty year,
hundred year period that that we would be able to say the same thing. But, there will be there there will be years when you have a very bad underwriting record, and and it'll lead into the full earnings. But so far, in the last twenty years, I think, we've only had, what, one underwriting loss of any. Yeah. So I think if you look at the entire range, including life insurance, our cost of float is 2.2 negative. That means we've got the float plus somebody's given us 2.2%
of that cash too. Yeah. It's like running a running a bank where people leave their money with you, and and you pay a minus 2.2%. And you don't have any check clearing or anything else to do. And it's included that. So hey. It it but we run our business actually with a different mindset than than than any other PC company, I think, probably in the world. And and and I wouldn't be talking about it if I thought they could duplicate it. And then, the final the final page is on share repurchases,
and clearly, we haven't made any we have not made share repurchases so far this year. And, share repurchases if if Berkshire buys Berkshire shares and repurchases, we've now paid more than you will pay if you buy Berkshire shares. I don't think people generally know that, but but there is a a tax that was introduced a year or so ago, where we pay 1%. And that not only hurts us, because we pay more for it than you do. That's a better deal for you than for us. But it actually hurts some of our investee companies quite substantially.
And, you know, Tim Cook has done a wonderful job. I mean, really wonderful job running running, Apple, but he spent a hundred billion dollars roughly in a year repurchasing shares, and there's a 1% charge attached, now. So that that's a billion dollars a year that he pays when he buys Apple stock in, which we like compared to what you pay. And and it doesn't sound like much, but well, a billion dollars sounds like a lot. Still, I don't know.
But, there are people that want to increase that that particular rate dramatically. And and, and you you won't read about it or anything like that, but it does make it slightly less attractive, than than it was before, and we will only buy in our shares if we think that they are almost certainly underpriced as valued very conservatively. And and, we get that opportunity occasionally, but the higher that charge goes that the federal government charges us for doing it,
the less we will be able to do or repurchases. So on that happy note, we will rejoin, at 01:00, and, we will I'm sorry. Yeah. Break that correct that to 11:00, and then we will Yeah. 11:00. And then we'll continue till 01:00. And then in the meantime, enjoy yourself, sure a help here.