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I want to start with a question : what impression did Mr. Buffett make on you ? It was a weekend filled with sentimentality, perhaps even some melancholy, as they remembered Charlie Munger, his longtime associate. What impression did Mr. Buffett make on you? Well, he was such a generous, brilliant, and wise man in my life that there was hardly anything he could have disappointed me with.
He is 93 years old. He had just lost his closest friend and closest business confidant, and he was feeling the effects of that, and Charlie, they started the meeting with a bunch of Charlie's jokes from years past, and it was impossible not to get emotional about it. This is truly the end of an era.
The implication was that Greg Abel was taking on a more important role within the company. He is appointed successor. Did you feel it? Mhm. Oh yes. He will be the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway , the chief asset manager in choosing between buying entire companies and investing more in stocks, etc. Which came as a bit of a surprise to us.
We thought the last 10 years or so would be a process of handing over more control over company selection to Todd Combs and Ted Weschler, and that explains why they weren't given a more prominent role at the annual meeting. We've been thinking about this for the last three or four years, and we've got the answer to our question.
But it will be a different company. This is a wonderful large conglomerate that is closely tied to the economy of the United States. And if you want a great company that is closely tied to the United States economy, this will be a good investment for you for the next 10 years. And, of course, we shouldn't even hint that Mr.
Buffett is close to the end of his career. He's a great leader, has amazing stamina, and of course, he's still completely in charge of it. So, let's talk about their huge cash pile—over $180 billion, heading toward $200 billion. What should they do about it? Discussions are underway. Would you, as a shareholder, want them to pay dividends?
Or would you like them to make a major acquisition? Or would you like them to buy back their own shares? We are not interested in dividends. It would be nice if they bought back shares, but you always have to think about Berkshire Hathaway: do as I do, not as I say. Because Warren Buffett is an extremely nice person, and he has absolutely no intention of offending anyone.
But if you look at what he's doing, he's more bearish than ever before. I read between the lines from the very beginning at the meeting on Saturday. I was sitting in the room and I thought, "Okay, huge cash position, reduced stake in Apple, he's digging up something a little bit under the surface that hasn't been announced yet." But essentially, he's waiting for the next 40 percent drop in the stock market to put massive amounts of capital at bargain prices into assets that are big enough to be significant for a company of this size." So you just used the phrase, "He's as pessimistic as I've ever seen him." Is that really the right characterization, or is it more that he thinks the market is too expensive to go big and put in new capital?
In other words, is that as much of a bearish forecast as a rejection of the idea that now is the right time to invest? Tyler, you asked a great question. So I'm going to answer it in a slightly unconventional way. In 1969, he went from being a largely quantitative value follower of Ben Graham to being a more qualitative follower of Charlie Munger, right?
Getting a reasonable price for a great company. And he said back in '67, '68, '69 that quantitative ideas that he used to like to buy have been studied in depth. It was in his letter to the partners. And this year, last year, he said that the things we would like to do have been endlessly reviewed. So it's a coded signal that we think the market is expensive.
We're not in a hurry. We're going to wait. And remember, he's been saying consistently for 10 to 15 years that the bigger Berkshire gets, the more it constrains their ability to do it. So to get a very large opportunity to invest that $200 billion at scale, you have to have the entire market in a very difficult environment.
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