By Laura Sanchez
Investing.com - "One of the strongest protections against inflation is to improve your skills and work to be the best in your field". This was the mantra repeated by Warren Buffett at the Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRKa) shareholder meeting on Sunday, May 1, in Omaha, Nebraska.
For Buffett, skills, unlike currency, are inflation-proof. "If you have a skill that is in demand, it will remain in demand regardless of the value of the dollar," he says.
And after arguing for years that high valuations were thwarting its stock-buying efforts, Berkshire is back in action. The conglomerate made net purchases of about $41bn in the first quarter, including an increase in its stake in Chevron Corp (NYSE:CVX) which brought the investment into Berkshire's top four common stock holdings.
Buffett also revealed that the company now holds an expanded 9.5% stake in Activision Blizzard Inc (NASDAQ:ATVI) shares, an arbitrage bet on the video game maker amid the acquisition by Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT), according to Bloomberg.
Berkshire's massive common equity stake in Occidental (NYSE:OXY) was one of its biggest purchases disclosed in the first quarter and came on top of the $10 billion Berkshire had already invested in the oil producer years ago. Buffett noted that the investment materialised quickly after spending a weekend reading a presentation by CEO Vicki Hollub.
Buffett and his business partner, Charlie Munger, answered questions about markets, nuclear weapons, and even Bitcoin. They were joined by two key people, Greg Abel and Ajit Jain. Last year, Abel was officially confirmed as the next CEO of Berkshire when Buffett steps down.
Maintaining your investment strategy despite high inflation is similar to the advice Buffett shared in 2009 at the end of the Great Recession when he said: "The best thing you can do is invest in yourself," recalled CNBC.
At the time, Buffett also said that the best thing a person can do is invest in "a wonderful business" that makes products that are in demand regardless of the performance of the dollar.
He used a company like Coca-Cola (NYSE:KO) as an example, saying that people will still want their favourite soft drink decades from now and that inflation will play no role in their decision.
"It doesn't matter what has happened to the price level, because people will continue to pay for the products they like," Buffett said.