"Buffett Shows Wit and Spirit"...Omaha World-Herald
(Courtesy of Yahoo's bobo21029.)
..........
BY MICHAEL KELLY
WORLD-HERALD COLUMNIST
Berkshire Hathaway
Omaha.com: Money & Investing
Fremont, Neb. - Looking fit and flashing wit, investor Warren Buffett said his Berkshire Hathaway holding company will do just fine when he's gone.
Not that he's planning to depart anytime soon.
"I'm going to retire about 10 years after I die," he joked to Midland College business students. "And even that isn't fixed in stone, I want you to understand."
As they laughed, he cracked that he has given his board of directors Ouija boards so he can give advice from the beyond. "I'll keep in touch."
The markets were closed Monday for Presidents Day, so Buffett accepted the invitation of the college president, Jennifer Braaten, to speak at Midland - where his late father, Howard Buffett, gave a series of 1955 lectures.
Warren Buffett told about 100 students at the Lutheran college that he is an agnostic - believing that the human mind cannot know whether there is a God - but that his father was very religious.
"As a practical matter," Buffett said, "I think my dad and I came out at about the same place in terms of what we believed behavior should be and how society should operate."
He said some gain a code of behavior from religious dogma, and that's fine. Buffett joked about his own karma, or destiny: "I always say my dogma got run over by my karma."
His appearance Monday came as Berkshire stock has begun to rebound. He recently issued a statement denying rumors that he was seriously ill.
Buffett will turn 70 on Aug. 30. His talk Monday indicated that he's the same ol' Omaha billionaire named the 20th century's greatest investor.
From a high of $80,900 per share in July 1998, Class A Berkshire shares fell 47 percent to $43,000 on Valentine's Day. The stock closed Friday at $50,900.
Buffett never comments about the stock price but says his investments are for the long haul. If he is bothered by the overall drop in Berkshire stock, he didn't show it. Buffett was spirited as he talked about ethics, philosophy, luck and good habits.
On a serious note, he said Berkshire has excellent managers who easily can take his place when he dies, although the job may be split in two - one to handle operations and one for capital allocations.
Wearing a standard gray suit, Buffett urged the students to develop good habits by emulating the characteristics of people they admire. He said he has about a dozen heroes, including his father and his wife, Susan, of San Francisco.
"In my whole life," he said, "I never saw my dad or my wife . . . ever do anything in their lives that you couldn't put on the front page of a newspaper, written by an unfriendly reporter."
Buffett said he became interested in stocks at age 6 or 7. He drew more laughter by adding: "And I've always been upset that I didn't start earlier."
People can learn a lot from their own mistakes, he said, but it's much better to learn from the mistakes of others.
The biggest mistakes people make are in behavior, he said, adding that some people with very high IQs live unhappy lives.
"I consider myself ungodly lucky," he said. "I won the lottery. It didn't have anything to do with merit."
Asked about the booming Nasdaq exchange, heavy with high-tech stocks, Buffett again turned serious.
"Picking when a bubble will burst - I don't know how to do it. I know that valuations that don't make sense will come to bad ends. I'm not saying that all of the Internet, er, Nasdaq valuations are crazy. But there are a lot that are crazy. Very crazy."
Some naive investors, he said, will suffer sad outcomes.
Buffett said he already has written a letter to be mailed to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders when he dies. It begins, "Yesterday I died."
He cracked to the students: "If the stock goes down a lot the day I die, it's probably a very good buy. If it goes up a lot, I'm really going to be sore."
omaha.com |
