Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meetings

Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A) (BRK.B) is considered by many to have the most loyal shareholder base of any publicly traded company in the world. Leading up to this year's meeting, there has been no shortage of coverage of the event by both the mainstream media and bloggers.

As just one example, this year the company expects a record crowd of more than 30,000 people making the trek to Omaha. The event is so big for the city that even the after party for this year's meeting is highlighted on the webpage of Omaha's Department of Tourism. The party is billed as a place to "join Omaha's fashionitas and social mavens for globally inspired cocktails and music." For attendees who have had enough Buffett talk for a day, though, there is always the Nebraska Belly Dance Spectacular, which is also being held this weekend at the Quality Inn.

Given the strong loyalty and feelings of ownership on the part of Berkshire Hathaway shareholders, we wondered whether they leave each year's meeting feeling so good about the stock that they want to buy more. To measure this, we tracked the performance of Berkshire stock in the month before and after each of the last fifteen annual meetings. As shown, in the month leading up to each year's meeting, the average return for Berkshire stock is 0.17%. In the month after each year's report, Berkshire has averaged a gain of 1.62%, with only four years of negative returns.

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