By coinnews 
00:00 Speaker A
Berkshire Hathaway’s annual shareholder meeting kicking off this weekend. Warren Buffett’s cash reserves, succession plans, and commentary on tariffs and focus for investors attending. With us to break down what to expect, we’ve got Lee Munson, Portfolio Wealth Advisors President and CIO. Lee, great to have you here with us. You know, if you were to kind of mark down on your checklist, what is the priority for investors who are kind of using the Oracle of Omaha as their North star for their investing thesis, what should they be paying closest attention to here?
00:42 Lee Munson
Uh, first of all, I think that the thing that is most misunderstood is the cash hoard. I’ve never seen people so interested in that cash hoard. It’s been going on for months. It happened because they sold Apple. Um, it was a huge position. I I think that this is what you should learn from it. It’s not about, did Warren Buffett have a bunch of cash because he knew all these things were coming. It’s that when you have three, four, five, six, seven hundred percent gain because you bought Apple 10 years ago and you made a good buy, it’s okay to bring down that concentrated position. It’s okay to take some profits, circle the wagon, and do some research and not just put it right back in the market the next day because you read something on Wall Street bets. So I am interested in what they are buying. Uh, we’ve seen uh over the last so many months, they’ve they’ve picked up some aerospace. They’ve got this little company called Heiko. I own something sort of in that space called Transdigm. Uh, the other thing I want to see is buybacks. Are they going to be increasing buybacks? That tells you, you know, basically, do they think they’ll make more money, uh, you know, erasing and incinerating Berkshire Hathaway shares, or do they think they can make more investing. But I think that for me right now, I want to know about succession. I want to know if Greg Abel’s really going to take over. I want to know what kind of size he’s going to be trading, what kind of responsibilities he’s going to be having. Uh, because I think for a shareholder, that’s where it’s at. Let me just warn everybody. There’s two things not to take away. A, don’t read into the cash hoard. That just has to do with their own rhythm and this Apple position. And number two, Warren Buffett, I love him, I’ve studied him my entire life, but he’s not good on the macro. He was wrong about inflation for 30 years. So you got to stick to the things he really knows. And that’s how you read him to perfection. So when he starts talking about stuff at Geico, the information they have from the insurance arm, when he talks about those type of trends, that’s what you want to focus in on, because that’s what they have the most data, and that’s where he’s best at forecasting. What you want to do is you want to separate out the throwaway comments, he might make on inflation or other macro things because you know, I’m 50 guys, every five years, I read about how Warren Buffett tells me, I was wrong about this macro call. I was wrong about this macro call. So it’s like Groundhog Day. So just take it with stride, really look at what he’s buying and generally buy it six months later. They’re not good traders.
05:17 Speaker A
Yeah. Let me double click on that because what’s really interesting about what you’re saying is, don’t read into the cash hoarding. However, Buffett himself has said, there just wasn’t an opportunity for that I liked to put that money to work. Can investors anticipate hearing from him over the weekend about opportunities to put that cash to work?
05:49 Lee Munson
Well, that’s what we’re all hoping, right? That’s what we’re always hoping and praying. Every time we see one of these meetings is he’s going to say, hey, I bought a couple new things, right? And I’ve no idea what that’s going to be, but that’s what you really want to focus your attention on, because it tells you sort of the forward trend of what he’s thinking about and where he thinks value is. But remember, they do make bad calls. They do get in early. And I think that for investors, don’t, just because you hear it, don’t go out, you know, it’s like the stock broker on his first day, he goes down to the payphone, you know, and tells his dad, I just heard the most amazing story, you have to put all your money into it. Uh, but I I do think I’m interested if he’s further investing in aerospace, if he’s further investing in things in that military industrial complex, that’s where I’m most focused on, and I want to see if he’s increasing the size of some of those bets, because remember, as far as what they really own, it’s a bunch of Apple. And then the next two positions are Amex and Bank of America. And that’s really the bulk of what’s going on. So it’s going to take years for them to to really pump up these other positions. So go slow, do your own research and just do what Buffett did.