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Comment by paxys | Hacker News Reader

Berkshire Hathaway, not Warren Buffett.

Large stock sales always make headlines but they don't automatically signal bearishness or really anything else. After all what's the point of investing if you never realize gains?

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I think in Berkshire case they do, as they are swimming in cash and notoriously don't sell unless their business outlook changes dramatically.

In any case, I would not take what Berkshire does with much weight.

As Buffett himself said, if you took out their 5/6 best performing investments out of their equation they would be matching the sp500, and if you took out 20, they would be trailing it.

They know that their over performance came from a small number of incredibly well performing bets.

That's typical in the stock market, though. You're not going to have a 50% edge. You're going to have a 1-2% edge if you're the absolute best, and you're going to milk that for all it's worth.

Modesty is as important as not making bad bets.

Yes, but you’d be foolish to realize your gains if you think the stock still has a long way to run. That just triggers taxes and eliminates any further upside. So, we can reasonably conclude that either BH thinks Amazon’s run is nearly exhausted, or it’s one of the stocks with minimal forward prospects in BH’s portfolio and they want to deploy the capital with something that they feel will have a greater return (maybe Amazon still rises, but whatever else they want to invest in they think will rise more/faster).

Kind of both. It’s the last direct decision that he made for Berkshire as the guy in charge.

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