MacroPass™: 100 Insights From The Recent Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting

The top takeaways from Warren Buffett's swan song

This week’s installment of our popular MacroPass™ service for premium members of this Substack comes from value investor Pieter Slegers, whom I interviewed a few weeks back.

Pieter’s expertise is studying how the world’s greatest investors have succeeded.

As part of his ongoing research, of course he attended the recent Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholder’s meeting — the top world gathering for value-minded investors, and a historic one this year as Warren Buffett delivered the surprise announcement that he’s stepping down as active CEO.

Pieter took a LOT of notes at this year’s event, which was chock full of pearls of wisdom delivered by Buffett and his tremendous team.

Pieter has listed his top 100 takeaways for us below.

As a reminder, MacroPass™ is a weekly rotating selection of premium analysis from many of the big thinkers interviewed on Thoughtful Money.

To-date that list of contributors includes experts like Lacy Hunt (Hoisington), Stephanie Pomboy (Macro Mavens), Danielle DiMartino Booth (QI Research), Tom McClellan, Michael Howell (Capital Wars), Darius Dale (42 Macro), Doomberg, Ted Oakley (Oxbow Advisors), Kevin Muir (The Macro Tourist), Alf Peccatiello (The Macro Compass), Lance Lambert (ResiClub), Ed Yardini (Yardini Research), David Hay (Haymaker), Melody Wright (M3_Melody), David Stockman (Contra Corner), David Brady (FIPEST Report), John Rubino, Adam Kobeissi (The Kobeissi Letter), Sven Henrich (Northman Trader), Jeff Clark (The Gold Advisor), Charles Hugh Smith, Steven Bavaria (Inside the Income Factory®), Chris Whalen (The Institutional Risk Analyst), Felix Zulauf, Jesse Felder (The Felder Report), Brent Johnson (Macro Alchemist), Pieter Slegers, (Compounding Quality) and Anna Wong (Bloomberg Economics).

Recent MacroPass™ reports in this series include:

• Brent Johnson on the power dynamics underlying the tariff war

• Lacy Hunt on his latest quarterly outlook

• David Hay on the potential upside of unloved energy stocks

• Anna Wong on the expected impact of the 'Liberation Day' tariffs

• David Stockman on just how out-of-control the federal deficit is

• Kevin Muir on 'The Bear Case' for markets

• Doomberg On the USA's fiscal outlook

• Michael Kantrowitz' on uncharacteristic economic green shoots

If you’re already a premium subscriber to this Substack, just continue below to access Pieter’s full list.

But if you’re not (yet), read the start of it below and consider upgrading to premium and access the full version, as well as all past and future MacroPass™ content.

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I’m currently at the Berkshire AGM in Omaha

I will share the key takeaways with you live:

1. First remark: Warren looks fresh. His mental state is great

2. Greg Abel is actually already making a lot of the capital allocation decisions for Berkshire

3. Buffett is an amazing salesperson. He’s mentioning how much books they sold at the Berkshire event so far

4. Tariffs can be seen as an act of economic war

5. Never bet against America. The stock market will be fine in the end

6. Buffett thinks tariffs are bad for the US economy. Protectionism isn’t good

7. Trade should not be a weapon. The US became so successful thanks to an open market

8. Buffett is still very enthusiastic about Japan and the 5 trading companies he owns there

9. In the next 50 years we probably won’t