Dear Graduating Class of 2024

Congratulations, Class of 2024!  You got to start your journey during the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020, and now many of you are, or should be, ending it during the year democracy may die.  What is it with you?

Never mind that.  Think about this.....I've often said that all possible graduation commencement addresses may have already been given.

Think about the tens of thousands of speeches given every year by valedictorians and featured guests, over decades, and it's hard to believe every theme hasn't been covered.  I've been doing this annual post since 2012, and I'm not even going to pretend I haven't repeated a theme, or at least infiltrated one.

With that in mind, my advice to you this year will be an addendum of advice I gave from last year.  In 2023, I talked about how being 'woke' was generally a good thing, not a bad thing.

Which brings me to now, when we've seen small but noteworthy protests on college campuses over the Israel-Hamas war.  More specifically, the protests allege Palestinian genocide by Israel for its bombardment of Gaza, and ask for the war to end.  Some of the protests have not been peaceful, and have disrupted graduation ceremonies.

Look, it's good that you twenty-year-olds are so concerned about genocide that you'd want to actively protest about it, and bring awareness to an issue for which you care.  That's good woke.

However, it's dumb that some of you would protest in a way that threatens or physically harms people or property.  That's bad woke.

And to what end do you protest?  Once you've brought awareness to the issue, and maybe got the college trustees to meet about defunding some part of their endowment, you should declare victory and leave.  How does ruining graduation ceremonies for yourself or others advance your cause?

Also, let's face what should have been an obvious truth -- after graduation, when campuses empty out and there are no cameras to record you, the protests were going to end.  They would have ended soon anyway, as our very short American attention spans lost interest.

So to the Class of 2024 I say, choose your wokeness wisely.  There will be plenty of reasons to be offended in life.  If you're ignoring or amplifying all of them, you're doing it wrong.  

Berky Meeting Nuggets 2024

The first Saturday in May brought with it another Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholders meeting.  I was only able to attend the morning session this year, but I was able to pick up the afternoon session from the national video and audio feed.

Among the things I felt were noteworthy:

For the first time since this meeting became what it is, Vice-Chair Charlie Munger wasn't sitting next to Warren Buffett.  Charlie died just short of his 100th birthday last year, and he was missed.  A main reason for me to attend the meeting was to see him make funny, smart-ass comments about the state of certain national and international affairs.

This year the company movie that's always shown before the meeting was all about Charlie, with clips of prior meetings and skits.  At the end Buffett eulogized Munger, saying while Buffett may have been Berkshire's general contractor, Charlie was its architect. 

Buffett was again joined on stage by the current co-CEOs, Greg Abel and Ajit Jain.  Abel, who is the Chairman and CEO in-waiting, basically took on Munger's old role of answering questions after Buffett had given his responses.  Buffett even accidentally referred to Abel as "Charlie" at the start of the meeting.

Buffett reported that Berky is likely to exceed holding $200 billion in cash(!) this quarter, money they'd rather invest in company acquisitions, if they could find reasonably priced ones.

Another huge crowd attended.  At the beginning of the meeting, even the seats behind the stage were nearly full, which I've never seen before.  You can't see anything but a video board from there.

As has become the norm, most shareholder questions came from people attending from other countries, notably Europe and Southeast Asia.  That they would travel this far for what is not a televised meeting is a little bit cultish, even to me who travels about 150 miles.

Given the opportunity to be heard more, I thought Abel did very well with his responses, and it left me with confidence he's going to handle the CEO job just fine.