The big spike on the chart is from the 2014 letter (published in February 2015), when Buffett offered a look back at the 50 years since he had taken control of a faltering Massachusetts textile manufacturer and began its long transformation into an investment vehicle and industrial giant; Munger chimed in with his 2,430-word review. This look back involved acknowledging many mistakes, which has become a Buffett trademark. His 25-anniversary review was titled Mistakes of the First Twenty-five Years (A Condensed Version). The latest missive included four uses of the word, too, which, relative to the letter’s small overall word count, turns out to be a lot by Buffett standards.
There was very little news in the annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders that Warren Buffett released Saturday morning. Buffett did mention that “Berkshire had a good year in 2022,” with operating earnings of US$30.8 billion ($41.6 billion), and disclosed that subsidiary See’s Candies sold US$400,309, or 11 tonnes, of its peanut brittle and chocolates at last year’s annual meeting in Omaha. But the main thing that stood out about the letter was its brevity — at 4,455 words — it was the shortest Buffett shareholder letter in 44 years.
Yes, I began assembling this data before the new letter came out — I suspected there might not be much else to discuss. The trajectory already gave the unmistakable signal that the Berkshire chairman was winding things down. And, well, he is: Buffett is 92, while his long-time business partner, Berkshire vice chairman Charles Munger, is 99.
