Buffett sticks to business, avoids politics in annual letter

OMAHA, NEB. >> Billionaire investor Warren Buffett reiterated his rosy long-term outlook for the U.S. economy and his distaste for high Wall Street fees in his annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders that always draws a big audience.

The letter released Saturday also describes the performance of the more than 90 companies that Berkshire owns. But aside from that, Buffett largely emphasized points he’s made in the past.

Buffett will likely address other topics during a three-hour television appearance Monday on CNBC, but he still may leave some people wanting more.

Here are some highlights of what Berkshire’s 86-year-old chairman and CEO did say, and some of the top things investors wish he had addressed:

Rosy outlook

While reiterating his long-term outlook for a prosperous America, Buffett mostly steered clear of politics this year.

“I’ll repeat what I’ve both said in the past and expect to say in future years: Babies born in Amer-

ica today are the luckiest crop in history,” wrote Buffett, who has said he thinks the economy will be OK under President Donald Trump. Buffett is a longtime Democrat who supported Hillary Clinton in last year’s campaign.

Without mentioning Trump’s immigration policies, Buffett did note that “a tide of talented and ambitious immigrants” played a significant role in the country’s prosperity.

Fee fortunes

Buffett used the letter to again explain the advantages

of low-cost index funds. He said he estimates that wealthy investors who use high-priced advisers have wasted more than $100 billion over the past decade.

“The bottom line: When trillions of dollars are managed by Wall Streeters charging high fees, it will usually be the managers who reap outsized profits, not the clients,” Buffett wrote. “Both large and small investors should stick with low-cost index funds.”

And it can be extremely difficult for investors to determine whether a money manager has the rare ability to outperform the stock market. So Buffett said most investors are better

off not trying.

“The problem simply is that the great majority of managers who attempt to over-perform will fail. The probability is also very high that the person soliciting your funds will not be the exception who does well,” Buffett wrote.

Investing insight

Investment manager Cole Smead said he felt that Buffett spent too much of the letter extolling Berkshire’s virtues instead of talking about how he’ll approach investing the company’s $86 billion cash or what went wrong with the failed $143 billion bid for Unilever that Berkshire took part in with 3G Capital.