The purpose of this project is to come up with great questions for the Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholders' meeting. Veterans know that the meeting is a lot of fun. Buffett spends many hours -- from about 9am until 3pm -- answering any question shareholders have. He encourages just about any type of question and never loses his patience. It's difficult to get time at the various microphones scattered around the Qwest arena. They usually fill up very quickly in the morning. So there's a lot of value in actually getting access to a microphone. Yet most questions tend to be very basic and easily answerable by reading widely available material on Buffett or Berkshire (such as biographies, letters to investors, etc). Because Berkshire fanatics have painstakingly created near transcriptions of past meetings (recording is not permitted), we also know what questions have already been asked. Most importantly, we know what hasn't been asked -- by people at the meeting, or anybody else, for that matter. These are the most valuable questions we can ask -- the ones that, unless we stand up there and ask, will go forever unanswered. So the point of this site is to create a list of great, unanswered questions. Maybe people attending the meeting will be inspired by some of them and use them at the mike. Maybe we can distribute these questions to shareholders just before the meeting. In fact, this site is called Stable-Boy Selections because when Buffett was a kid, he published a tip sheet for horse betting at the Aks-ar-ben (Nebraska backwards) racetrack. So consider this a tip sheet to help you ask great questions at the Berkshire meeting. Send me your questions, and if it hasn't been asked or can't easily be answered using existing material, we'll post it. Happy questioning, Marcelo P. Lima MPL4@cornell.edu |