Berkshire's Annual Meeting has not been improved by expanding the format

I have been listening to video of the 1994 Berkshire meeting which covers the Q&A.  As always, Warren and Charlie have some insights about investing and human nature.  Berkshire was quite a different business then than it is today.  It was more heavily in insurance and owned many fewer operating businesses.

My take is that the meetings were more interesting when shareholders asked questions and those shareholders were fewer in number and likely savvier investors, on average, as a group.  Questions were much more focused on investing and on business and much less about macro policy.  I have a sense that the celebrity interlocutors that they have brought in to ask questions have not improved the quality of the questions.  I get why they do it - there are just so many people now who have an interest in the business they need a way to filter things and to group questions.

I suspect that to a significant extent there are two factors at work.  First, that the new format encourages people to emphasize questions that are *popular* rather than useful.  If hundreds or thousands of people ask in one format or another, question X, then a tendency will be to ask that question because lots of people want the answer.  Media personalities are very concerned about the quantity of eyeballs more than the quality of eyeballs.  Second, and relatedly, I think there is greater awareness that the meeting has wide following in a community of interest much wider than that of shareholders and necessarily that audience has more utility in questions about what books to read or how to have a good life.  But of course, those are not necessarily the questions that help one understand how to value Berkshire which remains, I believe, the chief purpose of an annual meeting of shareholders.  Third (I know, I said two factors … but this is perhaps point 2b) I think the questioners, being sort of special invitees, just don't think it is their job to be that challenging.  The best question asked at this years' meeting came from an 8 year old shareholder who was at her second meeting and asked why BRK has moved from high returns on capital businesses to low return regulated utilities.

In any case, I think there probably is value in listening to them at these meetings.  This is how the circus really got going, after all.

Here is the link.


P. S. Bill Ackman and Carol Loomis asked questions.