🔒 WORLDVIEW: The weekend’s big share tip from Warren Buffett – follow him and profit.

There’s plenty upside to the work I do. For instance, when you get to live tweet an event like the Berkshire AGM on Saturday. And to do it justice, you need to listen carefully. Daydreaming is not an option. Even the call of nature needs to be ignored. Because you never know what is coming next.

A benefit of forced focus is perspective. In the media generally, quotes get selected for their crowd appeal. But to really understand you need the context. Getting it takes time. Especially when it comes to Warren Buffett (86) and Charlie Munger (93), whose words are capable of holding 40,000 shareholders spellbound for five and a half hours.

Since my first visit to Omaha in 2005, I’ve become a little obsessed with the teachings of Warren and Charlie. Books about them dominate my library where ride of place goes to Berkshire annual reports back to 1965. Snug alongside the masterful “Poor Charlie’s Almanack”, the Munger-focused equivalent of his hero Benjamin Franklin’s annual which America’s highly respected polymath produced from 1732 to 1758.
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Those who follow the duo closely know this year’s AGM was a watershed. After years of resistance, they have publicly accepted things really are different in the Internet Age. And, more importantly, proving that even deep value investors can embrace the new worldly concept of exponentiality – something most of us find hard to get our heads around.

My own journey in understanding exponential growth owes a great deal to Stephen van Coller, digital operations chief of MTN. Two years ago, while CEO of Barclays Capital, he invested a few years’ training budgets to expose Singularity University to his staff and clients. Our then fledgling Biznews had the good fortune to be commissioned to record the event.

So, as with the Berkshire AGM, I was charged with staying completely and totally immersing myself over the two days, listening to and interviewing Peter Diamandis and Silicon Valley flag-wavers. I finally “got” exponential growth, started to understand the surging Naspers share – and appreciate why investors love the FANGs (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google).

A steadfast deep value disciple, Buffett admits he takes longer than the seven year older Munger to embrace new investment ideas. It was only after Munger’s intervention that Buffett abandoned his mentor Benjamin Graham’s “cigar butt” approach of only buying dirt cheap stocks. Given the way Munger praised Buffett’s ability to keen learning, he is surly also behind Berkshire’s move into technology stocks – an area Buffett long eschewed.

As often happens in new areas, Buffett’s first tech sector engagement has not been great. He began buying IBM in 2011 at an average purchase price of $170 a share. When the price finally got back there last month, Buffett dumped a third of his stake. And from his comments on Saturday, he’s probably selling what’s left. We’ll be following his lead in the Biznews Global Share portfolio. As his holding period is “forever”, Buffett doesn’t easily take a decision to sell.

But undeterred by the setback, the Oracle of Omaha isn’t abandoning tech stocks. He oozed confidence about Apple Inc, which in the past year has been built from scratch to the second biggest holding in his $140bn share portfolio. Buffett told Berkshire shareholders he might be zero from one on tech, but he’s expecting to be “one from two”. Using baseball speak to tell us Apple shares at their current $150 are still cheap. I’m certainly following him on this. You should be too.

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