Tired Of AI Yet? It Never Quits -- August 8, 2023

Locator: 45382TECH.

Before we get to tech, this "breaking" story over at The WSJ, link here:

Nvidia: just when you thought Nvidia would go into free-fall -- this from MarketInsider, from BofA, no less, and if you can't trust BofA, whom can you can trust?

Palantir: the gold standard -- at least according to Barron's -- 

Buffett: so, if Palantir is the one to beat, is the gold standard, does Warren Bufffett own any? Apparently not.

• ten stocks Buffett just bought and sold; US News, May 16, 2023;

• update, BRK, USA Today, August 3, 2023. "Are you diversified?" 
• Among the 47 companies that Berkshire Hathaway holds, eight stocks represent roughly 80% of the company’s holdings. Here’s a rundown of Warren Buffett’s eight largest holdings as of the end of the first quarter of 2023.

A reader got to this before I did. I was going to comment on Buffett and tech. But the reader just asked if I had any idea why Buffett reversed course on TSM so quickly. My not-ready-for-prime-time reply:

No idea. It was very strange. 

At the time tensions between China and Taiwan were all over the news and that’s what I talked about on the blog. But it was obvious that China wasn’t going to invade any time soon. 

TSM and AAPL are joined at the hips —. TSM is practically a division of AAPL. Buffett has a close personal relationship with Tim Cook. My hunch: Tim Cook said something to Buffett about chips. Just a few months later, Tim Cook at the June WWDC announced huge advances at Apple Silicon …. but Apple Silicon only designs whereas TSM does the actual manufacturing … so I have no idea. 

Buffett seems very adverse to tech. I was going to write about that today. 

Buffett missed on all three: he bought SNOW which hasn’t done a thing and completely missed Nvidia (209% gain) and missed the gold standard, Palantir (Barron’s today). 

He likes big cap, dividend-paying stocks in companies selling cheaply, and tech fails on two out of three — seldom any dividends and extremely high P/Es. And except for Japanese banks and a couple of conglomerates, he likes American. 

And, who knows, he may be right yet.