Can't Spell Old-Fogie Without G-O-L-F

We interrupt our regularly scheduled blog post for a message on recent news.  At age 50, somebody just won the PGA Championship, one of the four most important golf tournaments in the world.

Phil Mickelson, nearly age 51, did this a few days ago.  He's the oldest person to ever win a major golf championship.  This is a tremendous feel-good story for both sports and aging.

Over the past two decades, golf has become a sport that requires significant power and clubhead speed to be played at an elite level.  On most American golf courses, it's a huge advantage to be able to hit a golf ball longer.  The course where Mickelson won, the Kiawah Island Ocean Course in South Carolina, was played at one of the longest yardages of any tournament in history.

Just as a late-30-ish person begins to lose their agility and skill at most sports, there's no way a guy in his 50s should be able to hit the ball as far as others that are 10, 20, even 30 years younger.  But Mickelson has stayed healthy and flexible and powerful enough to do it.  That he still happens to have one of the best chipping and putting games in the world is no small feat, either.

To top it off, Mickelson has long been a crowd favorite for both boomers and youngsters, so it was a very popular victory.  He's been my favorite golfer to follow in the past 30 years, going back to when my old favorite growing up, Jack Nicklaus, stopped seriously competing in the late 1980s as he was approaching age 50.

It proves that golf is a sport that can be played competitively, even at the highest level, at an age well beyond what can be done in other legitimate sports.  (A possible exception is bowling, or maybe billiards or darts, but if you can play them in a bar, is it really a legitimate sport?)

It also proves, once again, that people can accomplish great things throughout their lives, not just when they're 'young' whatever that means.

Berky Meeting Nuggets 2021

Unfortunately again this year, only virtual attendance was allowed at the Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholders meeting.  It was still quite different than last year, when the meeting was held in an empty arena in Omaha.

This year, the meeting was held in a studio / ballroom in Los Angeles, to make it easier for Charlie Munger to attend and participate.  Everybody missed having him around to make his smart aleck comments last year, including Warren Buffett.

I watched the entire stream again, almost five hours of Buffett and Munger answering questions submitted by email.  Buffett first kicked off the meeting by noting that not one of the 20 top companies by market capitalization 30 years ago are still among the top 20 today.  The point being, no one knows how things are going to change in the coming years.

This year, more questions were directed or re-directed toward the co-COOs, Ajit Jain and Greg Abel, so we got to hear more from them.  Which leads to the biggest reveal from the meeting.....

Munger inadvertently mentioned that Greg, (not "Greg or Ajit") would maintain the Berky culture, implicitly admitting Abel would become the CEO.  Buffett confirmed this after the meeting, and while it was highly expected, it was the first public confirmation of something that has been a closely guarded secret for many years.

Aside from that slip of the tongue, the 97-year-old Munger didn't disappoint, sharing his disgust for things like cryptocurrencies, which he described as "contrary to the interests of civilization."  Both Buffett and Munger also held noted disdain for special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs), due to the self-interest of the participants over shareholders.  Same for new investing apps like Robinhood, which Buffett described as a "casino group that's joined the stock market."

Near the end, one of the best quotes came from Munger when he said about the past year, ""If you're not a little confused by what's going on, you don't understand it."

Buffett signed off by saying he hoped we could all get back together in person next year in Omaha.  I plan to be there.