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by goodbyesf 980 days ago
> As a huge fan of Buffett, I must point to the fact that can materially change this comparison in the years to come:

The beauty of financial 'journalism'. They choose arbitrary points of comparison to fit whatever they are trying to 'sell'. Wonder why 20 years and not the past 21 years or 25 years or 30 years?

> - stock market returns were abnormally high for the past 15 years

Which was expected since we had QE and low rates for much of the past 15 years.

> Mind blowing, knowing what happened later.

Sure. He also said everyone should buy when the markets were collapsing in 2008 ( aka when there is blood on the streets ). And that was great advice as well. But Buffet's problem is that he discounts tech. He famously chose not to invest in microsoft because he didn't understand software and technology.

2 comments

Buffett has a huge investment in apple. The tech comment is outdated
Despite that he is still underinvested in tech looking at how big a portion tech is now of the S&P 500. Mostly because he does not understand it if he did according to his own rules he would have even larger investments in tech.
Apple stock currently represents nearly 40% of Berkshire Hathaway's equity holdings.
> Mostly because he does not understand it (...)

What leads you to believe that he doesn't understand it? I mean, how many tech companies failed/are failing badly?

It's easy to single out Microsoft as an example of a success story, but it's even easier to pick failure stories. Perhaps Warren Buffet does well smelling out those?

> What leads you to believe that he doesn't understand it?

People dont understand the subtle art of language.

I, on the other hand, have always assumed that Buffett made the "I don't understand" remark with typical self-deprecating-but-knowing Buffett charm — as in, "All you people piling into dot-com stocks must be much smarter than I am, because I just don't get it!"

In other words, I believe that, in typical Buffett fashion, Buffett understood everything he needed to understand about technology in the late 1990s, which is that technology investors had gone stark raving mad.

https://www.businessinsider.com/why-buffett-doesnt-invest-in...

these are his own words from a few years back I did not make them up . He said as he did not understand he missed out on some good investments
> these are his own words from a few years back I did not make them up .

I'm sorry, but that's simply a gross misrepresentation of facts. If you read Warren Buffett's actual comment, it's quite clear that they were about the overall dotcom fever and how the bulk of these companies were objectively not a good investment. If course those who stood to benefit from the dotcom bubble were quick to attack Buffett to discredit him.

https://www.businessinsider.com/why-buffett-doesnt-invest-in...

Nothing to sell. Just making the point that active investing is hard.