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David“school at White Company. BenThat's exactly what I was gonna say. DavidAbout AWS. BenAWS is already a thing. That is the default for startups. It has been for years to go and be the cloud provider. So what on earth? What kind of thesis does he have on IBM? DavidWell, here's his thesis. He said, this is what he says publicly. He has been, quote, hit between the eyes by how great IBM is and how strong and defensible its client relationships are. Oh, brutal. BenOkay, boomer. DavidIf this is the first technology investment that Warren Buffett is gonna make, maybe it's a good thing he didn't make any technology investments. BenMaybe it's half a century too late. DavidYeah, seriously. He holds this thing until 2018 when he finally sells it. All told, he loses $2 billion, uh, in total, sells it for like around a little over $8 billion. Oh, but just like the opportunity cost of $10 billion of capital in 2011, you put that into IBM, my God. BenI mean, think about if you bought any other big tech company, any, just pick one, don't even end, just pick one, you would have done great. DavidWarren, go back to the monkey throwing the darts. Then in 2013, he partners with the private equity firm 3G Capital to take Kraft private and then merge it with Heinz. Warren, you're partnering with a private equity firm? Like, they're your enemy. You know what they do, right? Like, uh, anyway, Berkshire puts $10 billion into that deal. Their equity stake in Kraft Heinz today is worth about $11 billion. So, you know, they haven't lost money, but like, again, opportunity cost of capital here. That was 2013. Anyway, 2015, Berkshire acquires the aircraft parts manufacturer Precision Cast Parts for $37 billion in Berkshire's largest deal ever. Bigger even— oh, we skipped over the railroad. In 2009, they bought— they finally— BenBNSF— Davidthey bought the railroad. Good for it. That was a good deal. That was— yep, that has done well for Berkshire. Warren Buffett from 2008 to 2011, he was good. He was good in those years. But Precision Cast Parts, man, bought it for $37 billion last year. They took a $10 billion write-down on that deal, so that's a dog. And then the worst that we alluded to— oh my God, in 2016 he starts investing in the airlines. This is the man who said that he was going to shoot down Orville and Wilbur. Uh, what was he thinking? BenWell, the interesting thing is, so he sold the airlines in a panic sale right when the pandemic dip started. And we all know, of course, there was about 5 days where you could actually buy the dip before it came skyrocketing back. And somehow we didn't endure a real market crash in this global pandemic because, uh, monetary policy. DavidAnyway, thank you, Jerome Powell. BenYeah, Buffett basically sells at the bottom with these airlines. And it's interesting because I don't fault him for the sale. It is a very reasonable thing to sell the airlines then, because if the government didn't bail them out, they could have all gone to zero. I mean, the government was paying some airlines' payroll to sort of make it through that period. So I don't— even though he sold it, I like right around the worst, the bottom. I blame the buy. Yeah, he knew that. He even had a comment years before that he had sort of like a— is it like a romantic fascination or like a dirty habit about, about owning airlines or something like that? Like, he knew and he still did it. DavidIt's like the— he can't have newspapers anymore, so he wants the airlines now. Okay, to be fair to Warren, Again, the scuttlebutt here is— and there's some comments to this effect— that it actually was, I think, Ted who first got interested in the airlines, and they talked about it, you know, and then Warren. So, okay, you know, it's just kind of funny to me. You can't not make fun of Warren for this one. Like, right, it's, it's bad. BenYou can chalk this up to 'you should have known better.' IBM Precision Cast Parts, like, dude, those were, those were bad. DavidThose were bad. BenWell, and honestly, in the same time period, like, J&J wasn't great. The 2008 investment he did there. Yep. The railcars that I mentioned was around 2015. Not that great. DavidNot great. BenWell, and those are all the sins of commission, not to mention the sins of omission of Google, whoosh, Facebook, whoosh, Amazon, whoosh. And on top of all this, like, you own Amex, you understand Amex, you understand the brilliance behind what became the credit card interchange business. And you let a 2006 IPO by MasterCard and a 2008 IPO by Visa go right by you. These are crazy old companies that have been locked up inside the bank, you know, federations or however they were owned before. They're finally available for the public to buy. These stocks have gone like— these were criminally undervalued initial issuances. And Buffett just watches them go right by knowing the Amex business. It's crazy. DavidThat's such a good— I hadn't thought about that, but like, yes, you're right, to be allocating all this capital to these just dog businesses when Visa and MasterCard— put the tech companies aside— are just sitting there. Oh, brutal. Okay, so we're, we're hammering on Warren here, rightly so, but there is one shining, saving, all-sin-absolving addition to Berkshire's portfolio during this time. That's right, we are talking about the very same company that was Sequoia Capital's worst mistake ever by selling before the IPO. Berkshire and Warren redeems everything by buying Apple Inc. Amazing, amazing. This story— okay, so here's the story. In May of 2016, as Warren puts it in the quote, quote, one of the fellows in the office who manage money, aka Ted. Yep, it's never been said whether it was Todd or Ted, but I, I think it was Ted here because Todd really focuses on financial stocks and Ted does everything else. As Warren puts it, had, uh, put some money into Apple and indeed had put about a billion dollars. Let's assume it was Ted. Into Apple shares in May of 2016. That goes well, and amazingly, Ted, Todd, whomever manages to convince”