Berkshire Hathaway, Inc. (BTK) had just concluded its annual shareholders’ meeting nicknamed “Woodstock for Capitalists,” hosted by no other than the most renowned investor himself, Chairman and CEO Warren Buffett, and his partner and also a keystone figure in Investing World, Vice Chairman Charlie Munger. Here are the key takeaways from the meeting:

Current Market Volatility is an Opportunity

“Sometimes markets do crazy things. That’s good for Berkshire, not because we’re smart but because we’re sane,” said Warren Buffett. He reiterated that short-term fluctuation/price swings are great buying opportunities for his company and also for the general public to follow.

Berkshire Hathaway 2022 Buying Frenzy

When the COVID-19 pandemic started, BTK was a net seller in the stock market. However, this year, the company found significant and attractive opportunities. Berkshire closed a deal to acquire insurer Alleghany (Y) for $11.6 billion last March and has also accumulated several billions of dollars of shares worth of Chevron CVX +1.97% (CVX), Occidental Petroleum OXY +5.83% (OXY), and HP (HPQ) and lastly, increasing its stakes in Apple AAPL +0.20% (AAPL) and Activision Blizzard (ATVI). To sum it up, Berkshire bought $51.9 billion of equities and sold $10.3 billion in the quarter. In addition, the company ended the period with $102.7 billion in cash and U.S. Treasury bills.

The Trend for Investment/Fund Managers

He and his longtime friend also highlighted the mediocre results of most active investment managers despite their sophisticated approach and state-of-the-art tools, saying that they closely resemble the result of market indexes or, worse, underperformed market indexes.

Bitcoin Lacks Intrinsic Value

He was then asked if his view on Bitcoin had changed. He responded by saying that if everyone who attended the meeting in the room owned “all the farmland in the United States” or “all the apartments in the country,” and they offered him a one percent stake for $25 billion, he would “write them a check on the spot.” But he wouldn’t do the same for bitcoin and its over-$700 billion market cap.

“If you owned all of the bitcoin in the world and you offered it to me for $25, I wouldn’t take it,” Buffett said. “Because what would do with it? I’ll have to sell it back to you one way or another. It isn’t going to do anything.” He explained his views on farmland and rental properties in contrast with bitcoin as “the difference between productive assets and something that depends on the next guy paying you more than the last guy got.”

Cryptocurrency and NFTs are Off the Table

With his view on Bitcoin, he confidently said that cryptocurrency “will come to a bad ending” and that Berkshire Hathaway will “never have a position in them.”

He continued, “I get into enough trouble with the things I think I know something about. Why in the world should I take a long or short position in something I don’t know about?”

Stop Worrying About Inflation

“It’s extraordinary how much [inflation] we’ve seen,” Buffett said. However, he continued that predicting future inflation is a waste of precious time and that no one can know how much inflation there will be over the next one month, one year, and ten years. To give hope, he mentioned that “The best protection against inflation is your own personal earning power…No one can take your talent away from you,” Buffett said. “If you do something valuable and good for society, it doesn’t matter what the U.S. dollar does.”

Common Sense is Becoming Uncommon

“People are behaving more tribal than they have for a very long time,” said Buffett. He continued to discuss that Tribalism is not good for society as people are losing the ability to rationalize and make seemingly common-sense decisions harder in this day and age.