Even an Oracle can have an off quarter.
Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway reported a $1.58 billion loss in the first quarter of 2022, a significant reversal from the nearly $5 billion gain it saw at the same period of 2021.
“We haven’t the faintest idea what the stock market is gonna do when it opens on Monday — we never have,” the legendary 91-year-old “Oracle of Omaha” admitted Saturday to investors who flocked to Nebraska for the company’s annual meeting, the first in-person gathering since the start of the pandemic.
“If I had any sense of timing,” he said, he would have bought stocks when the COVID-19 pandemic went global in March 2020
“I totally missed that opportunity,” he said. “We haven’t ever timed anything. We’ve never figured out insights into the economy.”
Berkshire, a legendary US company that owns a diverse array of brands including insurance provider Geico and See’s Candies, reported $5.4 billion in profits, off 53% of the $12 billion it netted last year.
Berkshire also unveiled new multi-billion dollar investments in HP and Occidental Petroleum. In March the company purchased insurance giant Alleghany for $11.6 billion.
The company meeting, often billed as “Woodstock for capitalists,” has long been an iconic day-long affair, where Buffet fields questions in a 17,000-seat arena.
Buffett took aim at investment banks and brokerage firms, saying they had turned Wall Street into a “gambling parlor.”
“Wall Street makes money, one way or another, catching the crumbs that fall off the table of capitalism,” Buffett said. “They don’t make money unless people do things, and they get a piece of them. They make a lot more money when people are gambling than when they are investing.”