Berkshire's $397B Bet Against an Overheated Market • Hacker News Board

Re: Berkshire's $397B Bet Against an Overheated Market

#101

Post by cpburns2009 » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 1:59 PM UTC

inigyou wrote: post #33

abc123abc123 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do, your children will live. Or, if you don't have children, your non-profit does not. I wish people would stop using this "we all die" slogan when it comes to their financial lives, and think a bit about the people who will be left after you retire.

I hate that having children is apparently the only purpose anyone has in life because I don't have children or a purpose in life and I'm pretty sure I would be even more depressed if I had children.

Living only for yourself gets really boring. Children give you a life-long purpose. That and the evolutionary purpose, or drive, of life is reproduction.

Re: Berkshire's $397B Bet Against an Overheated Market

#102

Post by redwood » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 2:17 PM UTC

surgical_fire wrote: post #93

wongarsu wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a world where Tesla has stayed at "severely overvalued" stock prices for about a decade, with occasional crashes to just "overvalued", I'm not so sure the big AI companies really need returns that justify their stocks. Sam Altman and Dario Amodei are both in their own ways trying to capture that same lighting in a bottle where the company is evaluated solely on the CEO's vision

For how long can the gamble be detached from real life? It's an honest question. In the real world, resources and people are finite. Things have to make sense, the bills have to be paid. In the stock market however, a company can be completely worthless in the real life, but if the money blobs all agree to pumo money into it the stock price goes up anyway.

Well the question is what's a more appealing place to put your money? Because in the absence of one the stock market by default is viewed as an appealing place which drives up demand for it. You might say well folks should just spend their money and enjoy it instead of putting it in the market but that's a whole different strategy. You might say folks should buy real estate well that's a whole different strategy. You might say folks should sit on cash and bonds and other low-risk assets well that's another strategy. High interest rates actually make cash or at least bank savings rates more appealing than they were 5 years ago... yet folks are still seeking those double digit returns. Can you blame them? What will trigger the downturn will be folks who've overextended themselves on margin forced to sell in order to liquidate assets

Re: Berkshire's $397B Bet Against an Overheated Market

#103

Post by redwood » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 2:20 PM UTC

mschuster91 wrote: post #88

wongarsu wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a world where Tesla has stayed at "severely overvalued" stock prices for about a decade, with occasional crashes to just "overvalued", I'm not so sure the big AI companies really need returns that justify their stocks. Sam Altman and Dario Amodei are both in their own ways trying to capture that same lighting in a bottle where the company is evaluated solely on the CEO's vision

The problem is, the last two decades were marked by extremely low, zero and sometimes outright negative interest rates plus a ton of outright printed money that got blown up the arses of the big banks. Worldwide. That money sought returns and found them in hypergrowth of increasingly dumber nonsense. First it was Meta (or back then, just Facebook), then Tesla, then during Covid cryptocurrencies and NFTs, and now it's…

Right now it seems like space, defense, robotics, and in the fullness of time quantum computing are very clearly positioned as the next big things. Let alone bio and healthcare stuff which is always humming along especially after ozempic shakes things up

Re: Berkshire's $397B Bet Against an Overheated Market

#104

Post by redwood » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 2:22 PM UTC

plomme wrote: post #97

cmiles8 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good advice. Ironically most long term folks that just buy low cost index funds and take a nap outperform most of the market stressing out daily on their next move. That’s the cruel reality of investing. When you factor in the opportunity cost of all that stress and managing an active portfolio the percentage of successful active portfolio managers likely falls down to single digits. Invest early, invest consistently…

This has been my investment philosophy as well, but I'm starting to realize that this is forgetting that "past performance does not guarantee future results". It only works when the index goes up, and I don't see any fundamental reason that should be true on the long term. I don't know of a better alternative though.

Well the fundamental reason boils down to the idea that these companies that you're investing in employ a bunch of sophisticated professionals who wake up everyday aiming to grow the success of their businesses. In other words you're really investing in their potential. Compare that to for example something that's purely speculative like gold.. a useless piece of metal that just sits there. Buffett has really helped me see this difference

Re: Berkshire's $397B Bet Against an Overheated Market

#105

Post by baal80spam » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 2:23 PM UTC

sph wrote: post #40

cmiles8 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good advice. Ironically most long term folks that just buy low cost index funds and take a nap outperform most of the market stressing out daily on their next move. That’s the cruel reality of investing. When you factor in the opportunity cost of all that stress and managing an active portfolio the percentage of successful active portfolio managers likely falls down to single digits. Invest early, invest consistently…

Though I keep wondering if the ‘invest consistently whether the market goes up or down’ defeats the point of a stock market in the first place. People effectively keep throwing money at mediocre or failing endeavours, which magnifies any structural problem, and everything seems to keep going up whether it’s good news or bad news, until the bottom falls out. My reading might be wrong, but since 2020 there is no bad ne…

> My reading might be wrong, but since 2020 there is no bad news that seems to faze the market by an iota.

Or maybe - because it's the bad news that sells - there is much more of the good (or neutral) news that outvalue the bad news, that is just unknown to you?

Re: Berkshire's $397B Bet Against an Overheated Market

#106

Post by redwood » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 2:24 PM UTC

inigyou wrote: post #41

abc123abc123 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that I am not arguing that children is the purpose in life for everyone. For some it is, for others it is not. I believe that the majority of child bearers are "on program" driven by their biological imperatives. I believe that among the voluntary non-children people (of which I am one) there's plenty of values, goals, hopes and aspirations. In fact, for me, life is so rich that that is why I do not want childre…

Yeah, I used to feel life was rich too, and then I very suddenly became aware that it was finite and anything I could possibly do is just leading towards the same fixed point ending. I think mentally healthy humans have ways to avoid thinking about this.

Many people feel they live on through their children. Or through the people they've influenced. It's all a question of how you think about things

Re: Berkshire's $397B Bet Against an Overheated Market

#107

Post by plomme » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 3:15 PM UTC

redwood wrote: post #104

plomme wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been my investment philosophy as well, but I'm starting to realize that this is forgetting that "past performance does not guarantee future results". It only works when the index goes up, and I don't see any fundamental reason that should be true on the long term. I don't know of a better alternative though.

Well the fundamental reason boils down to the idea that these companies that you're investing in employ a bunch of sophisticated professionals who wake up everyday aiming to grow the success of their businesses. In other words you're really investing in their potential. Compare that to for example something that's purely speculative like gold.. a useless piece of metal that just sits there. Buffett has really helped…

Does it follow that the price of the index should go up in perpetuity because workers are motivated?

Re: Berkshire's $397B Bet Against an Overheated Market

#108

Post by Anon1096 » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 3:20 PM UTC

surgical_fire wrote: post #93

wongarsu wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a world where Tesla has stayed at "severely overvalued" stock prices for about a decade, with occasional crashes to just "overvalued", I'm not so sure the big AI companies really need returns that justify their stocks. Sam Altman and Dario Amodei are both in their own ways trying to capture that same lighting in a bottle where the company is evaluated solely on the CEO's vision

For how long can the gamble be detached from real life? It's an honest question. In the real world, resources and people are finite. Things have to make sense, the bills have to be paid. In the stock market however, a company can be completely worthless in the real life, but if the money blobs all agree to pumo money into it the stock price goes up anyway.

Wealth is not in fact finite. If you take a piece of lumber and carve it into a dresser you've just generated wealth. Resources kind of are but not really, extraction takes it from unusable to usable and essentially creates it (also, trees literally grow out of the ground). Similarly Tesla has made a lot of cars that people drive and AI companies have created products that have hundreds of millions of DAU.

Whether that "justifies" the market prices is orthogonal, all the market price says is that people want to own a piece of the pie at the current price being offered. It can stay that high as long as there continue to be people interested in owning shares of the companies.

Re: Berkshire's $397B Bet Against an Overheated Market

#109

Post by vintermann » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 3:35 PM UTC

vintermann wrote: post #96

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing I worry about is: what happens when an actual set of adults get back into the White House? That could well be the trigger for the crash of all crashes because they might actually bring some reality pins with them, which are the antithesis of the growing, in size and number, fantasy balloons of hot-air the current cough leadership cough is facilitating.

The opposition in the US doesn't believe in anything except "stability". That means they'll probably keep most actual Trump administration policies. Probably even the war on Iran, though they might stop pretending to call it off every weekend.

To people who think I'm cynical (and are presumably downvoting), I present this nice example which just turned up: "Kirsten Gillibrand wants to save crypto - but Trump windfall is a political obstacle"

https://theintercept.com/2026/07/13/gillibrand-crypto-trump-...

I am not exaggerating.

Re: Berkshire's $397B Bet Against an Overheated Market

#110

Post by yetihehe » Mon, Jul 13, 2026, 3:41 PM UTC

stasomatic wrote: post #95

yetihehe wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Find purpose which aligns with "progress or wellbeing of our species". Making kids is one, making inventions is another, helping poor or sweeping roads fits too. If you see that your "way of living" will affect people positively, typically you will have a "good life purpose". What happens when you have kids? You leave something that will last after your death. Then you make sure that they are properly raised and have…

I understand this is childish, but nobody asked me if I wanted to be on this rock hurling through space at 230K/s. Thanks, parents :)

This is not childish. It means you have no purpose in life. If you feel life is not worth living, find purpose and you will feel better. "Make more life", "make life more bearable for me" and "make life more bearable for others" are good universal ones, to have a starting point. If you don't like them, find a better one. Of course, if you DO want to be unhappy, please continue as is :), accumulated unhappiness sometimes leads to big things.