Warren Buffett was greeted with a jam-packed audience of Berkshire Insurance policyholders. The hall was mostly filled with fund managers from Mumbai. Buffett, as usual, passionately articulated his investment style and his role models in life. He was also positive about India’s growth story.

The audience raised questions regarding which sectors he finds attractive for investment at the moment. Buffett explained that he did not look at sectors for investment; that was not his style. He looked at individual companies and he invested for the long term – 15-20 years. Buffett said he had more ideas when he started (investing) and less of capital. Now it was the reverse: He had more capital and fewer ideas.

He said any investment that guaranteed three to four times returns in the next 40-50 years, should be considered good. Of course, there are possibilities that we might see irrationality of the kind we saw in 2007 (the housing bubble in the US), he said. Buffett cautioned that investors should not lose faith whenever that happened as long as they believed in their particular investment.

Buffett named his dad as his role model as he was a big influence during his early days. His dad had a big role in shaping his early thinking. Buffett also looked to the godfather of value investing Benjamin Graham as a role model for investment philosophy. He told the gathering that during his early years he was a looking for a book on investing.

In fact, at the age of 12 he had read all the books on investing at the Omaha library, yet he was not satisfied. He finally read Benjamin Graham’s `The Intelligent Investor’, when he was about 19 years old. It turned to be the book he was looking for. He told us that even after so many years it remained the best investment book ever written. Buffett felt The Intelligent Investor, first published in 1949, does not require any improvement. He also told us that he felt he could not do further improvement on the book.

Asked on his views on gold, Buffett explained that he would prefer investing in something that brought more value to everyone. He said he would not be comfortable sitting in front of a huge cube of gold and watch its value grow.

In India, perhaps, people are buying more gold and real estate because they may want to pass it on to their children just the way they inherited gold and real estate from their parents. He said it would take some time before investors here got comfortable investing in stocks.

On the United States, Buffett said despite all the recent problems, the average living standard in his home country was much better than it was 50-60 years ago. Similarly, in India, where the economy was growing at 8-9 per cent, the outlook was bright. India’s living standards had improved tremendously in the last 25 years. The next 25 years would see further improvements.

There were always 50-60 participants raising their hands at a time to ask questions to the legendary investor. In the end, we all felt two hours were not adequate. Rather than wondering why Warren Buffett had not come to India earlier, we should celebrate the fact that he has come to the country.

(Warren Buffett met policyholders of Berkshire Insurance from 6 pm to 8 pm on Friday at New Delhi’s Taj Palace hotel, where leading investment gurus and fund managers from Mumbai bought $48 insurance policies just to meet the legend and question him on investment tips. Among India’s leading investment gurus who attended the session were Madhusudan Kela of Reliance Capital, Sandeep Kothari of Fidelity Mutual Fund and A Balasubramanian. Enam Securities attended the session with a big team of fund managers. Raamdeo Agrawal, joint managing director of Motilal Oswal Financial Services, a big Buffett fan, who has attended the famous Berkshire Hathway annual meet at Omaha, Nebraska, at least 9 - 10 times since 1996, also participated in the Delhi do. Agarwal reported for Financial Chronicle)