{"id":49911,"date":"2026-05-02T22:41:31","date_gmt":"2026-05-02T22:41:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/i-was-in-the-room-when-warren-buffett-gave-a-surprise-interview-at-berkshires-annual-conference-the-mood-swung-from-excited-to-gloomy-then-hopeful\/"},"modified":"2026-05-02T22:41:31","modified_gmt":"2026-05-02T22:41:31","slug":"i-was-in-the-room-when-warren-buffett-gave-a-surprise-interview-at-berkshires-annual-conference-the-mood-swung-from-excited-to-gloomy-then-hopeful","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/i-was-in-the-room-when-warren-buffett-gave-a-surprise-interview-at-berkshires-annual-conference-the-mood-swung-from-excited-to-gloomy-then-hopeful\/","title":{"rendered":"I was in the room when Warren Buffett gave a surprise interview at Berkshire&#8217;s annual conference. The mood swung from excited to gloomy, then hopeful."},"content":{"rendered":"<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/69f634579a23d20d291b5c13?format=jpeg\" alt=\"Warren Buffett\"\/><figcaption>Warren Buffett called out &quot;gambling&quot; and the dangers of deepfakes in a surprise interview.<\/p>\n<p>Carlos Barria \/ Reuters<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<ul>\n<li>I was in the room when Warren Buffett unexpectedly sat for an interview on Saturday.<\/li>\n<li>He warned of a &quot;gambling mood&quot; in markets during Berkshire Hathaway&#039;s annual meeting.<\/li>\n<li>The legendary investor also underscored the threat posed by nuclear weapons and deepfakes.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I was in the room when Warren Buffett sounded the alarm on &quot;gambling&quot; in markets, nuclear weapons, and deepfakes on Saturday.<\/p>\n<p>During Berkshire Hathaway&#039;s annual meeting, the company&#039;s chairman and former CEO joined CNBC&#039;s Becky Quick backstage for a surprise interview.<\/p>\n<p>The pair&#039;s conversation was broadcast live to a crowd of thousands seated in the CHI Health Center in Buffett&#039;s hometown of Omaha.<\/p>\n<p>I had a bird&#039;s-eye view of the event from the press box overlooking the stage, and could see the crowd&#039;s excitement at the prospect of hearing the business icon speak.<\/p>\n<p>Kartik Rangarajan, 54, a tech worker from Dallas, told me it was a &quot;very good, pleasant surprise&quot; that Buffett sat for an interview, as he was eager to &quot;hear from him directly.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Brett Gardner, the author of &quot;Buffett&#039;s Early Investments,&quot; told me that he saw lots of people milling around outside the arena for large portions of the Q&amp;A.<\/p>\n<p>But as soon as Buffett started speaking, he said, &quot;everyone just crowded around the TV and it was like, &#039;We&#039;ve got to listen to Warren.&#039;&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Buffett, a renowned bargain hunter, has struggled to find deals on stocks and businesses in recent years. He told Quick that today&#039;s market is &quot;not an ideal environment&quot; for deploying cash.<\/p>\n<p>The benchmark US stock index, the S&amp;P 500, has surged by 27% over the past five years to record highs of above 7,200 points. Berkshire shares have slumped by 8% over the same period.<\/p>\n<p>Berkshire sold a net $8 billion worth of stocks last quarter, boosting its cash pile to a record $380 billion at the end of March.<\/p>\n<p>Addressing the challenging market and Berkshire&#039;s ballooning cash reserves, Buffett said the company has the right people and is set up to &quot;pick our spots.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>The business icon put his legendary patience into sharp relief when he said that out of the past 60 years, only &quot;five of them have really been juicy.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Buffett, 95, is known to invest only within his &quot;circle of competence.&quot; He told Quick that he has not learned about any new industries in the past decade, and doesn&#039;t plan to change that.<\/p>\n<h2>&#039;Gambling mood&#039;<\/h2>\n<p>Buffett described the market as a &quot;church with a casino attached,&quot; referring to the divide between speculators and long-term investors focused on company fundamentals.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;The casino&#039;s gotten very attractive to people,&quot; he said, nodding to the boom in short-term trading and more aggressive use of leverage in recent years.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;If you&#039;re buying one-day options, or selling them, that&#039;s not investing, that&#039;s not speculating, it&#039;s gambling,&quot; Buffett said.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;We&#039;ve never had people in a more gambling mood than now.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Buffett couldn&#039;t resist taking a shot at the &quot;wonderful trading departments&quot; that practically shut down during crises.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;Just try them out when the market is collapsing,&quot; he said, adding that if they do pick up the phone, they&#039;ll use any information you give them to &quot;go out and kill you some other way.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>&quot;It&#039;s really like going to a slaughterhouse,&quot; Buffett said. &quot;You don&#039;t feel like eating hot dogs for a while.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Rangarajan told me he perceived Buffett&#039;s comments &quot;not so much as a grim picture,&quot; but as a message to shareholders that he was patiently waiting for opportunities to arise.<\/p>\n<h2>From worry to hope<\/h2>\n<p>The mood in the arena turned dour as Buffett described the threat posed by countries with nuclear bombs and the risk that something could &quot;fall out of the sky&quot; at any moment.<\/p>\n<p>The investor said it was important to be aware of that danger, but added that it does &quot;no good to worry about it.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Buffett restored the room&#039;s good vibes when he joked about his lack of travel in recent years. When Quick asked if he had met the new managers of some of Berkshire&#039;s key holdings, he sent ripples of laughter through the audience by quipping: &quot;I haven&#039;t met the old managers.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>The former Berkshire CEO, who made way for Greg Abel at the start of this year, also sparked chuckles in the crowd when he discussed the perils of marriage.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;But you can make mistakes with people, just look at the divorce rate,&quot; he joked.<\/p>\n<p>Along with his late business partner, Charlie Munger, Buffett is known for saying that a person&#039;s choice of spouse is one of the most important decisions they&#039;ll make in their life.<\/p>\n<p>Buffett briefly commented on the rise of deepfakes and other forms of imitation, calling it a &quot;scary&quot; trend, especially at a time when several countries possess nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n<p>He lifted the crowd&#039;s spirits with his final comments. He heralded America&#039;s remarkable longevity and lasting appeal as a place to live.<\/p>\n<p>Then he reiterated his faith in the &quot;golden rule,&quot; which Quick clarified was the biblical advice to &quot;Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>&quot;I&#039;ve never seen anybody unhappy that behaves that way,&quot; Buffett said.<\/p>\n<p>Ranganaran, who told me he&#039;s been a Berkshire shareholder for over 25 years, noted that Buffett has spoken more about &quot;giving and helping others and being kind&quot; in recent years. <\/p>\n<p>&quot;All of it is a good message for us to take back,&quot; he added.<\/p>\n<p>Quick ended the conversation to whoops and applause with the words: &quot;Warren Buffett, the chairman of Berkshire Hathaway.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Read the original article on Business Insider<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Warren Buffett called out &quot;gambling&quot; and the dangers of deepfakes in a surprise interview. Carlos Barria \/ Reuters I was in the room when Warren Buffett unexpectedly sat for an interview on Saturday. He warned of a &quot;gambling mood&quot; in markets during Berkshire Hathaway&#039;s annual meeting. The legendary investor also underscored the threat posed by [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":49912,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-49911","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49911\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}