“Google has a huge
new moat. In fact
I’ve probably never
seen such a wide
moat. Their moat is
filled with sharks.”
-=- Charlie Munger,
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(Reuters) - One of Warren Buffett’s and Charlie Munger’s biggest regrets was not buying shares of Google owner Alphabet Inc.
“I don’t mind not having caught Amazon early,” Munger said. “The guy (Jeff Bezos) is kind of a miracle worker, it’s very peculiar. … But I feel like a horse’s a#$ for not identifying Google earlier … We screwed up.”
Buffett and Munger were asked if Berkshire Hathaway’s investing philosophy had changed given that one of Berkshire’s portfolio managers recently bought shares of Amazon.com Inc.
Todd Combs and Ted Weschler manage roughly $26 billion of Berkshire’s investments.
Munger said he and Buffett saw how great search engine optimization was used in its Berkshire-owned GEICO and “we just sat there sucking our thumbs.”
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Yea, lets continue this thread with all the Meta/Google mandates we’ve been making for some time, our disdain of Oxidental is legendary here. We are the brightest and best…
…Buffett is sitting around regretting not buying Tesla, Google, and Facebook!
Or so it was that the board kicked chompin off for his energy posts - that they were off topic. Life is great if you can stand it.
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Look at their past statement on GOOGL. NOT FB. Notice new and improved price. Is it possible?
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Aha. Chompin good to see you. Do you still have your Meta? Thoughts?
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See how fast technologies have been changing, one needs to be careful about digital moat. They may not be the same as old-fashion moat like brand-name, physical location, etc.
Brand name? Google it is a verb worldwide
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That’s where one needs to think hard. McDonald’s brand-name is not the same as Google’s. Food production and people’s taste don’t change for a long time. Technologies could change in years. If, for example, some company comes up with an AI that can answer people’s search better than anything exists on the Web, there’s no cost for people to switch from Google to that AI.
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Blackswanny my view of Meta is the same as when I was getting hammered the board for not buying on the big downswing to $225. Zuck is obsessed with the quest headset and virtual…but when do sales/profits come and will they be significant? Will it be proprietary in nature or will the “success” get spread around or his $ and efforts get profits for others? Why are we so certain this is such a huge thing? Isn’t it normal that an entire new group of brilliant/driven innovators now begin to immerge? When the stock fails to be a tool for compensation and/or buying other things – well isn’t a 10 pe stock really on track to be a 20 pe stock? ("What the hell…I want cash dude…not your worthless stock!) And I remember so well my investment club, full of very successful wealthy men, who had bought EMC at less than $1.25 per share and it got to $105 and we didn’t sell; Cisco we bought at $4 and held at $82; etc. We had a close but failed (thank goodness) vote to put 100% of the club many into EMC on the way down at $35…but ended up selling for $7…which was still a 15% annual gain for us. But anyway, nearly all our stocks of the dominant stocks Cisco, EMC, Intel, Microsoft…and more? If we still had them, now 22 years later we’d have done terribly.
So Facebook? Aren’t these things the new new newspaper business, maybe cyclical growth, but in Meta/FB’s case instead of newspapers 90 plus years of Z-E-R-O competition these things have so much competition is rings the bells all over the place…doesn’t it? Cyclical growth…or cyclical decline? Choose wisely.
Zuck sold $17 bil…and now needs Meta weath none at all. Play money for him.
Wild guess when you own a business where the capital allocator is slinging profits and saved net earnings for a low probability outcome.
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I meant, do you still hold it, adding or sold out?
Some interesting info here. Meta is the top Superinvestor purchase of the last 6 months and indeed the last 12 I believe. Before that it was BABA. I’m wondering if these are ones to short rather than buy 
Chris Bloomstrams commentary of share buybacks is quite shocking to read.
Bit of a dog really. With better management and capital allocation the share price would be much higher. Share holder value creation 1/10 
. You live and learn…
Another share certificate to paste on the wall to learn from and remember 
. I’ve almost finished off wall covering my study this week.
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I try not to personally note buys and sells because these things tend to play out as fake or ego superstar builds, but I began buying Facebook at $11 and something and bought a tad here and there along the way. Then sold out all but just a tad of it…for a LOSS, on the slide from that $225 range that the former board ranted as such the obvious “buy”. I did not sell because of thinking this or that about the future stock price Blackswanny, I sold it 100% because I did not want to think about Zuck’s capital allocation. That was the case no matter what. To me his use of capital is just a crazy gamble, and I being a shareholder was babysitting his privilages to gamble.
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My guess is it is about here where you’ll see the “statistical” value investors, at least a few of them, buy Meta. They buy them all and overall it slowly but surely works.
Jim’s method of valuation thus buy/sell/hold of Berkshire was simply a multiple of book. Do we really need to build a castle to momorialize something that takes all of 5 seconds to do?
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Good morning, over 20 years ago I was attracted to brk, in part, because Buffett and Munger were working virtually free, NO option grants, very little total compensation. Since most public companies take about 2-5 % of stockholder’s equity annually, in various ways, I thought there was very little chance that brk would not outperform most public companies. imo, one of the reasons Buffett finally agree to buybacks, was based on the fact that brk struggled to beat the indexes over broad periods of time. Once upon a time, a post like this one would lead to threats that if I continued this line of reasoning, I would be excommunicated from the church of Foolsbrkville, hopefully, those days are over. We shall see. Have a grand day all.
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I read this high level, insightful and critical thread from Mr. Bloomstran wrt META. It makes me sick and detest Facebook/META even more beyond its detrimental societal effects and invasion of privacy. Fortunately, I have never owned META, nor T****. Zuck and Musk appear in need of integrity and despite huge financial success, they have never found a compass indicating true North.
I am thrilled I ultimately absorbed and trusted Mr. Buffett long ago. He is old school and operates within a seemless web of deserved trust alongside Mr. Munger. They stand for integrity and moral duty and treat us like co-owners, not patsies. There IS such a thing as a win win win outcome with Berkshire who is lapping the almighty S&P by nearly 20% over the last 12 months as tremors persist.
Zuck, Musk and other talented CEOs should truly rethink and reset their faulty perspectives and priorities. They should study and emulate the greatest of all allocators, investors, managers and motivators who personify integrity and honor the Golden Rule with genuine prioritization of their fellow shareholders’ best interests.
Long live Mr. Buffett and Mr. Munger! Their generous and clear lessons in business, investing, model behavior, humor and life have proven Much more valuable than any darn degree certification I have earned.
Imo, it feels good to support leaders and corporations that do it the right way, regardless if it leads or trails the bogey by a couple hundred basis points long term.
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I said Google based on Munger’s factual past quotes. Nothing about Facebook/Meta.
You’d put facebook in the same camp as big tobacco and defence contractors and anything Chinese?
Goog looks interesting sub 90 thats the old 1800 level. I had a discussion with Jim about smoothed earnings, 10 year growth rates. He didnt think it would hit this level think he said 2200 - 2300 must be a screaming buy.
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Google is trading at less than or at a market multiple ex cash. Severely under earning Read Munger past quotes. No brainer LONG TERM at $90
S&P500 hit 7.73 PE 1982. Read alongside “feel the pain” post we’re in for a 70’s replay i think.
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