One of the events preceding the 2025 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Shareholders Meeting is ValueX BRK, which was held in Omaha on May 2, 2025, hosted by Guy Spier. The event drew a stellar lineup from the investment and business world.
Check out our coverage of the 2025 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting and other exciting Omaha value investing events here.
One of the panels included Chris Begg, a co-founder, CEO, and CIO of East Coast Asset Management. Additionally, he is an associate professor of business at Columbia Business School, teaching students about the security analysis that the great Ben Graham did in the past.
William Green was the moderator of the panel, and he started off by emphasizing the importance of Begg’s work in the university, since Warren Buffett was one of the best students during Ben Graham's tenure, mastering the art of security analysis.
Green pointed out that he interviewed Begg a few weeks earlier when markets were plunge. Chris Begg was very calm and joyful despite the overall market condition, and he even added one position to his portfolio, bringing the number to eight.
Staying Calm During Storms
Begg started off by sharing the most important lesson that he learned from Graham, Munger, and Buffett: that practicing value investing means that those that are permanent and those that are passing.
When a major economic event, like tariff implementation, happens, it is crucial to assess how it will impact the businesses you own in a permanent way and which in a short-term way. To better understand this, he looks to Ben Graham and the concept of margin of safety.
Begg is sure that this will pass, and while some things are just transient, others, like business value creation, are permanent.
