Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #307455 in Books
• Published on: 2008-10-07
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 312 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780071601979
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

From the Back Cover

Welcome to the “WOODSTOCK OF CAPITALISM”

Omaha Nebraska, Saturday May 3, 2008 The nation’s largest mortgage lender, Countrywide Credit, has collapsed after 38 years of making home loans—-a victim of its own aggressive lending practices, soaring loan losses, and a credit squeeze that forced it to sell out at a fire-sale price.

Bear Stearns, which survived the Crash of 1929 without a single layoff and ranked among the top investment banks in the United States, virtually disappeared overnight after 85 years on Wall Street. Only an 11th hour rescue by JP Morgan and the U.S. Treasury prevented a world-wide financial meltdown.

And 31,000 people have converged on Omaha to hear what Warren Buffett thinks will happen now.

The “Oracle of Omaha” is in the building.

“After reading Pilgrimage to Warren Buffett’s Omaha, my view of Buffett has been radically changed. Jeff Matthews reveals some of Warren Buffett’s most interesting professional foibles and personal blemishes.”—Douglas A. Kass, Seabreeze Partners Management Inc.

About the Author

Jeff Matthews founded Ram Partners, LP, a hedge fund based in Greenwich, CT, in 1994. His distinctive financial blog, Jeff Matthews Is Not Making This Up, is regularly featured in the Wall Street Journal’s blog roll and has a loyal following among Wall Street analysts, traders, and portfolio managers, as well as investors around the world.

Customer Reviews

It's Pretty Good
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.

A great read - Insightful, Witty and Well-Written - Unlike the snoozefest Snowball
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.

This is almost like a religion
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