Customer Reviews

Pilgrimage to Warren Buffett's Omaha: A Hedge Fund Manager's Dispatches from Inside the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

This book is about the experience of going to Omaha to the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting. Usually airline companies fly with 81 percent occupancy, but during the annual meeting in Omaha, all the airlines are completely booked by passengers who purchased their tickets way in advance. People who come to see Warren Buffett represent sort of a cult as Charlie Munger once said.

Unlike during other annual meetings, shareholders get a chance to ask questions. But there are rules:

* State your name and hometown
* Ask your question promptly; speak loud and clear
* Do not ask more than one question or attempt to "bundle" several questions together

Because this book was published in 2009, it contains very current information on subjects such as the subprime crisis, which according to Buffett, was caused by dumb lending and dumb borrowing. I like how every chapter starts with a quote from different individuals, but most of them are from Buffett and Munger. This is a great book about a great investor and his "cult."

- Mariusz Skonieczny, author of Why Are We So Clueless about the Stock Market? Learn how to invest your money, how to pick stocks, and how to make money in the stock market

As a long time reader of Mr. Matthews' blog, JeffMatthewsIsNotMakingThisUp, I looked forward with anticipation to his book on his take-aways from the Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meetings. Upon reading, I was not disappointed. The book is based on a series of blog posts from the first year Mr. Matthews attended the "Woodstock of Capitalism", as the Berkshire shareholder meetings are affectionately referred to.

The book, I should note, is not another biography of Warren Buffett like Roger Lowenstein's excellent "Buffett: The Making of An American Capitalist". Nor is the book a distillation of Berkshire Hathaway's investment tenets such as Robert Hagstrom's "The Warren Buffett Way". The book focuses mainly on the type of questions Berkshire shareholders ask Mr. Buffett and his partner, Charlie Munger, as well as the answers they provide. The author then proceeds to offer his own take on the views shared by Mr. Buffett and Mr. Munger, as well as the questioners/shareholders themselves.

Mr. Matthews throughout his work offers some great contrasts between the public pronouncements by Mr. Buffett and the actions Berkshire Hathaway takes with its float and shareholder capital. An example would be Berkshire's use of derivatives on currency trades, while Mr. Buffett publicly pronounces the use of derivatives as "financial weapons of mass destruction".

Readers will also get the sense of the admiration the author holds for Mr. Buffett and the way he runs Berkshire shareholder meetings, which are unlike any other shareholder meeting for American publicly traded companies. One need only remember the time Bob Nardelli, then CEO of Home Depot, back in May 2006 not even answering shareholder questions about CEO compensation or having a truly independent board of directors.

The reason I give the book four stars is while the subject is both unexplored and given a breezy, easy-to-read treatment, I felt the book could have gone much further given the subject. I would have given the book five stars had the author contrasted the Berkshire shareholder meeting with that of another publicly traded company Mr. Matthews holds to see how Berkshire sets the standard for the way shareholder meetings should be run.

Overall, I found the book to be a pretty good read and you won't be disappointed with the treatment given by the author.

I found this book to be an enjoyable read that, unlike Snowball, kept my attention straight through. I enjoyed Jeff Matthews' insight into the mind and personality of the "Oracle of Omaha". I would recommend this book to anyone - from wall street hotshots to young professionals just starting out.
Jeff also provides an in-depth look into the incredible following that hangs on Warren's every word... a comprehensive account that I had yet to see in previous Buffett books.
I would also suggest checking out his blog - I've been an avid reader of it since early 2006 and have enjoyed the majority of his posts. Like the book, Jeff's posts are full of his wit and astute perspective.

The author claims to be a hedge fund manager but he has an amazing amount of free time to do things like write a snarky blog and this book. The book is actually just a collection of his blog entries. Given how much has transpired with the economy and Buffett since the book was written, the book feels irrelevant already. I've always been interested in gleaning wisdom from the world's richest man but somehow it all gets lost when translated by Mr. Matthews. The book made feel foolish to revere Buffett but at the end of the day Buffett is worth billions and the guy who wrote this waste of time ...well.

As someone that has been to the annual meeting a number of times, I agree that the book was very light on details and would have been better left as blog entries. Perhaps, it was more insightful for those that haven't been to the annual meeting. Also, I found a number of inaccuracies in the book and it came across as not being well researched. One that I can think of off-hand is that he describes Buffett as a athiest, which is not accurate. Buffett has described his religious beliefs as agnostic for a number of years. These are not the same thing.

This is a great read. The moment I picked it up I couldn't put it down. When I finally did put it down, I couldn't stop thinking about it. Mr. Matthews takes you into the world of Warren Buffet and his shareholders. His writing and analysis takes a completely different look at Mr.Buffet's investing methods along with the way he interacts with his shareholders. It is a fresh look at Warren Buffett that will cause some to think twice about the "Oracle of Omaha". I also liked how he takes a look at Mr. Buffets long time friend and partner Charles Munger. Being a college student and not owning any shares of Berkshire Hathaway this is as close as I am going to get to the annual meeting in Omaha and it does a great job taking the reader to the Qwest Center in Omaha, Nebraska. The book opens up many questions about who Warren Buffett is and what he is all about. After finishing this book, all I wanted to do was learn more about Mr. Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway. You don't have to be an investment banker or hedge fund manger to understand or appreciate this book. This is an excellent tool to understand investing as well as learning how to succeed in any type of profession. It doesn't have all the answers but it paints the big picture. Mr. Matthews does a great job. I know he writes a financial blog and have yet to read it but after reading this, I am already a fan of his knowledge and writing. As Mr. Buffet says: "Read everything" and if you are going to read anything soon, read this book.

Pilgrimage to Warren Buffet's Omaha matches Roger Lowenstein's standard setting Buffett biography in terms of taking a clear-headed look at, to use the cliche, the man and the myth. Written in a breezy style that makes this an easy and delightful weekend read, Mr. Matthews leverages his years of Wall Street experience to insightfully illustrate, illuminate and at times question both the style and the substance of the Buffett/Munger team, cleary the most succesful investors of our, or probably any, day. The author's distillation of both the Buffett/Munger investment thesis and approach makes for a wonderful primer on the theory and practice of investing in the stock market. This book sits squarely at the intersection of great fun to read and thoroughly enlightening.

Every year, I read the Q&A of BRK Annual Meeting done by various nice people sharing their experiences in Omaha. To be frank, not all Q&A are that easy to understand without knowing the history and background of those subjects and this book supplements those history, ideas and background for newbie like me. Everyone will surely learn from that and this is so enjoyable.

Sometimes, I have this question come to my mind - `Why Warren and Charlie like to answer questions from different people on different subjects and share their successful ideas and thoughts with the other?'

Having read the Q&A for years and the book, I think what Warren and Charlie try to EDUACATE us their values towards money, life, friends, rationality, thoughts, integrity, giving-away, etc.

Years gone by, we could observe more and more talent value investors appears and found successful, such as Seth Klarman (I treat him as third generation). More and more people invest intelligently, behave more rationally and act positively. Warren and Munger are actually creating a group of rational intelligent people with handful gunpowder (money). To me, I think this group of people will grow larger and eventually change the world in way which leads us to a better world. It is a kind of cult.

Personally, from the Q&A and the book, it gives me the opportunity to stand down, read and think about the heroes/books that Munger introduced - like Benjamin Frank, John Rockefellers (esp. his Dear Father/Dear Son letters), Darwin, Richard Dawkins, etc. They change the way how I think, I behave. Thanks Munger for giving me the opportunity to meet these great men despite the fact that some of them are gone.

The Graduate Finance Organization at the University of Wisconsin-Madison had the distinct privilege of hosting Mr. Matthews for a discussion of his book. We are a group of MBA students who are passionate about investing. As such, the opportunity to have Jeff on campus to speak with us about the greatest investor in the world was a truly outstanding event.

Mr. Matthews' book imparts all the respect due Mr. Buffett while never losing the healthy skepticism inherent in a successful hedge fund manager. I think this is a unique approach as the book mentions not only Mr. Buffett's investing coups but also some of his less successful ideas.

Matthews also reveals some of Mr. Buffett's human foibles. This tact humanizes Buffett and suggests he may be less "oracular" than the media sometimes portrays. I suspect some who deify Mr. Buffett may be dismayed by some of these details but I found the approach beneficial and welcome.

The book provides a window into the Berkshire-Hathaway annual shareholders meeting and the tens of thousands of people from around the globe who descend upon Omaha on the first weekend in May to take in Mr. Buffett's wisdom, wit and good old-fashioned, mid-western common sense.
Mr. Matthews' eloquent yet understandable prose coupled with his dry wit make the book an easy read while still providing fodder for the investor's mind. The book is filled with interesting ideas and insights while adding a sort of pop culture look at the world's greatest allocator of capital, making it attractive to a wide range of readers from those simply curious about The Oracle to the most ardent Buffettologist.

An excellent, easy-to-read book that provides insight into how Warren Buffett works his magic. I am buying copies for all my kids who are in their 20's. Might as well start young at understanding how to manage and make money.