Ever since 2000, US investment giant Warren Buffett has held an annual auction for Glide, a San Francisco homeless charity. The prize is a steak lunch with the 84-year-old Sage of Omaha himself. The winners can take up to eight people to meet him. Since 2003, when the auction went online to eBay, prices have surged.
In 2003, renowned short seller David Einhorn paid $250,100. Prices peaked in 2012, when an anonymous bidder paid $3.4m. They then dipped to $1m before bouncing back. Dalian Zeus Entertainment, a Chinese online games development company, won this year's meal; its winning bid was $3.2m.
Prices for the Buffett lunch have risen much faster than shares in Buffett's investment vehicle Berkshire Hathaway, or restaurant meals in general, notes the FT's Stephen Foley. The price of the lunch is up by 838% since 2003, while the cost of the food is only up 41%.
Subscribe to MoneyWeek
Subscribe to MoneyWeek today and get your first six magazine issues absolutely FREE
Sign up to Money Morning
Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter
Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter
-
Bitcoin price one of the most-asked questions on Alexa - here's how to buy the cryptocurrencyAccording to figures from Amazon, which cover September 2023 to November 2024, pop star Taylor Swift and Bitcoin were named among the most popular Alexa queries of 2024
-
Investing for children this Christmas – five ideasIt might not come with a shiny ribbon, but an investment fund could be the gift that keeps on giving. We share five ideas if you are investing for children this Christmas.
-
What would the greatest mathematician of the Middle Ages say about gold today?Sponsored Italian mathematician Fibonacci is most famous for a curious sequence of numbers. Continuing his series on technical analysis, Dominic Frisby explains what these numbers are, and what they can tell us about gold’s next move.
-
How moving averages can reveal trades worth betting on – and ones to avoidSponsored Dominic Frisby looks in more depth at how moving averages can help you catch turning points in markets and help you decide which trades are worth pursuing.
-
This chart pattern could be extraordinarily bullish for goldCharts The mother of all patterns is developing in the gold charts, says Dominic Frisby. And if everything plays out well, gold could hit a price that investors could retire on.
-
Believe it or not, this market is a “buy”Charts With the world in the state it’s in and the market so volatile, buying stocks right now might go against all your instincts. But that’s just what you should be doing, says Dominic Frisby. Here, he explains why.
-
Chart of the week: avocados and bitcoin are in syncCharts An amusing new spurious correlation has been spotted between the price of bitcoin and Mexican Hass avocados. In reality, of course, they have nothing to do with each other beyond “superficial price action”.
-
Chart of the week: Kuwait's stockmarket is ready for take-offCharts Kuwait's stockmarket is due to be promoted from “frontier” status to an emerging market by index provider MSCI next June. That should entice almost $10bn of global investors’ cash into the country.
-
Chart of the week: US stocks outrun profitsCharts The US stockmarket has become totally detached from underlying profits of its constituent companies over the past three years.
-
Chart of the week: Dr Copper diagnoses an ailing economyCharts The price of copper has slipped by a fifth this year and is now at a near-two-year low of around $5,600 a tonne.
