You did not read the letter or look at the financials.

Apple makes up about half of the equity portfolio, but there are also massive private ownership stakes (bhe, BNSF, insurance and many more) and ~$144bn in cash

If you calculate by market cap, BRK’s AAPL shares are ~$150B/$713B market cap of BRK = 21% AAPL.

Buying BRK still seems like putting more of your eggs in the AAPL basket than buying SPY, which to me, would be orthogonal to diversifying away from tech.

I guess BRK gives you exposure to Buffet and his team’s management skills, but I would be very surprised if they manage to sidestep a downturn in AAPL’s fortunes.

I don't think it's a fair comparison.

Berkshire has more or less concentrated their tech exposure to what they view as the very best of the bunch (Apple). You can also make a very reasoned argument that Apple isn't a (pure) tech company. You can't really make that argument about Alphabet or Facebook in my opinion.

When people say Berkshire diversifies you away from tech, they mean that you are diversifying away from the dozens of tech companies in SPY of varying quality.

> You can also make a very reasoned argument that Apple isn't a (pure) tech company.

I cannot envision what this argument could be and be congruent with my working definition of “tech company”.

> When people say Berkshire diversifies you away from tech, they mean that you are diversifying away from the dozens of tech companies in SPY of varying quality.

I can see that as a possibility. I did, possibly erroneously, assume in the original post I replied to that tech was shorthand mostly for MAMAA, so I guess we would need voidfunc to weigh in on what they meant.

This assumes brk market value = book value. I'd guess they trade higher than book value.

I guess you can always call the difference between market cap and book value "good will" or something...

Well, I trust Buffett more than your average financial advisor. I'd say it's a fair premium.

Another way to look at it is that you are getting the other assets of BRK for $419bn. 713-(150(apple)+144(cash)). Which I think is a steal.