Warren Buffett announced he personally decided to invest Berkshire Hathaway's money in Alphabet. This is apparently newsworthy because people forgot that Warren Buffett runs Berkshire Hathaway.
The Oracle of Omaha felt compelled to clarify that he, the CEO, initiated the investment. Not his ghost. Not a magic eight ball. Not Todd Combs or Ted Weschler, though everyone assumed it was them because Buffett spent forty years saying he doesn't understand technology. He cracked the code on search engines at age ninety-something. Inspiring stuff.
Retail traders immediately began buying Alphabet calls, convinced that if a man who uses a flip phone thinks Google is undervalued, they should mortgage their house. These same traders will panic sell when Buffett reveals he was actually just trying to figure out why his grandson won't answer his emails and accidentally clicked buy on his E-Trade account.
The investment was described as big, which in Berkshire terms means somewhere between your annual salary times one thousand and the GDP of Norway. Buffett's previous tech investments include IBM, which he sold at a loss, and Apple, which worked out so well he now believes he understands computers. He does not understand computers.
CNBC treated this announcement like breaking news despite the fact that Berkshire's 13-F filing already disclosed the position months ago. But nothing gets the financial media harder than Buffett saying literally anything into a microphone. He could read a grocery list and they'd ask three analysts to explain the implications for the dairy sector.
The real story here is that a ninety-three-year-old man made a phone call and we wrote articles about it.
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