Warren Buffett at Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting 2023

The Berkshire Hathaway meeting has adjourned for lunch. During the break, many in attendance have a chance to tour the showroom floor and take in the displays.

Here are few scenes the venue:

-David A. Gogan & Yun Li | CNBC

Buffett clarified that Apple is not 35% of Berkshire’s portfolio like a questioner suggested because that figure does not account for the non-publicly traded businesses owned by the conglomerate. But Buffett did speak glowingly about Apple, of which Berkshire owns nearly 6%.

“Our criteria for Apple was different than the other businesses we own —It just happens to be better business than any we own,” Buffett said.

He added that the iPhone’s status among consumers makes it an “extraordinary product,” making him very happy to own a stake in the stock.

“Apple has a position with consumers where they’re paying 1,500 bucks or whatever it may be for a phone. And the same people pay $35,000 for having a second car, and [if] they had to give up a second car or give up their iPhone, they give up their second car. I mean, it’s an extraordinary product. We don’t have anything like that that we owned 100% of, but we’re very, very happy to have 5.6 or whatever-it-may-be percent, and we’re delighted every 10th of a percent that goes up.”

The Oracle of Omaha added that he regrets having sold some shares a few years ago.

“I made a mistake a couple of years ago and I sold some shares. I had certain reasons why gains were useful that year from a tax standpoint, but having heard me say that, it was a dumb decision.”

“We want to own good businesses and we also want to have plenty of liquidity. And beyond that, the sky’s the limit,” Buffett said.

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Diversification has become a standard investing rule to help reduce risk and create a more resilient portfolio, but there is such a thing as overdoing it that investing educators don’t give enough attention to, Munger said.

“One of the inane things that’s taught in modern university education is that a vast diversification is absolutely mandatory in investing in common stocks,” he said. “That is an insane idea. It’s not that easy to have a vast plethora of good opportunities that are easily identified. And if you’ve only got three, I’d rather be in my best ideas instead of my worst.”

Some people can’t tell their best ideas from their worst, he continued, and oftentimes make the mistake of thinking what they deem a good investment is better than it might actually be.

“We make fewer mistakes like that than other people and that is a blessing to us,” he said.

“We’re not so smart, but we kind of know where the edge of our smartness is,” he added. “That is a very important part of practical intelligence. … If you know the edge of your own ability pretty well, you should ignore most of the notions of our experts about what I call ‘deworsification’ of portfolios.”

— Tanaya Macheel