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I just came back from a week in Omaha, Nebraska.
This was my first annual general meeting (AGM) as a Berkshire Hathaway shareholder. And the first visit to the United States in many years.
The purpose was to meet US-based investors and exchange ideas. But I also wanted to gain fresh perspectives on my writing and investing.
Omaha is an incredible city. I think there's a reason that Warren Buffett chose Omaha when he wanted to settle down. And almost every person I spoke to said they were grateful to live in Nebraska, and especially grateful to be able to raise a family there.
I was lucky enough to sign up for Tilman Versch's Good Investing Plus community. He organizes events around the Berkshire meeting each year, allowing investors to connect with one another. I didn't know many people attending the AGM, so it was great to meet people naturally through Tilman's events.
One of the highlights was a mingling event where we shared our top investment ideas. A common theme was bullish views on software stocks hurt by last year's SaaS-pocalypse. One tech-focused investor made the case that the way to "play" the AI story has been to invest in companies involved in data center construction, then chipmakers. And now, he's made the case that we're better off looking at software developers who can use AI tools to better serve their customers. One of the ideas that stayed with me was US-listed GoDaddy, whose main business of domain registration is now helping it distribute its in-house AI-powered website builder.
Tilman's group also got together for the AGM itself. We got seats close to the main podium, allowing us to see Buffett, Tim Cook, and the other Berkshire board members and executives.
To be perfectly honest, the AGM itself was not as exciting as I had hoped for. Greg Abel lacks charisma and seems less focused on public-market investing than Buffett once was. The absence of Ted Weschler was noteworthy, prompting me to question how deep Berkshire's talent bench really is.
I enjoyed Bob Robotti's talks at Creighton University and at the Fordham Gabelli School gathering. Robotti is a straight-talker who's becoming increasingly bearish on US equities. I asked him what asset class he thinks will outperform over the next ten years. He thinks the FTSE 250 will outperform NASDAQ. He also argued that the Canadian oil & gas industry will be a great growth story, without providing any specifics. And finally, he argued that US access to low-cost natural gas will give its industrial sector a long-term competitive advantage.
On Sunday morning, Li Lu's Himalaya Capital organized a stock picking competition for Peking University students. The kids were enthusiastic, with slide decks packed with information that would probably take days to read through. The stocks pitched included Xiaomi, CNOOC, Foshan Haitian, Tencent, and Vipshop. Among these, I was most impressed by CNOOC and Tencent.
The Sunday afternoon IdeaHouse event was another highlight of my week in Omaha. Some 40-odd investors, including Whitney Tilson, attended a five-hour session in which we pitched stocks to one another. Again, many of us pitched software stocks. I found the pitch on Duolingo particularly compelling. The presentations on OTC Markets Group, Rayonier, Kimberly-Clark, and Fairfax Financial also made perfect sense to me.
The only Asia-focused stock that caught my eye was the closed-end fund China Merchants China Direct Investments (CMCDI). This fund has been the target of Hong Kong-based activist investor Argyle since 2024. But what makes the situation potentially compelling to some investors is its 0.86% ownership of Moonshot AI, the owner of the Chinese large language model Kimi, which is now valued at US$18 billion and is targeting a 2026 IPO on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
I'm now on a flight back to Singapore. Was the trip worth the effort? I think it was. The Berkshire AGM is a rare opportunity to meet US-based investors, and I've made many new friends that I hope to stay in contact with.
But at the same time, visitor numbers were significantly down from last year's event. And once Buffett passes away, I imagine the number of visitors will decline further. Perhaps the Berkshire week will be replaced by regional conferences organized by Ira Sohn, the Milken Institute, LongRiver, Weird Shit Investing, and FatAlpha.
If you're planning to visit next year, I can highly recommend joining Tilman Versch's Community Plus group, as I found it to be the best way to connect with other investors. And that's really what the Berkshire AGM has been – and continues to be – all about.
