alt.hn

2/18/2026 at 5:56:08 PM

Warren Buffett dumps $1.7B of Amazon stock

 https://finbold.com/warren-buffett-dumps-1-7-billion-of-amazon-stock/

by fauria

2/18/2026 at 6:25:59 PM

Berkshire Hathaway has my favorite website (or, WEB page, as they style it) of any big company: https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/

by semiquaver

2/18/2026 at 6:37:38 PM 

  <meta name="GENERATOR" content="MSHTML 8.00.6001.18828">
*Jurassic Park taking off glasses.gif*

by meindnoch

2/18/2026 at 11:44:00 PM

I mean, what did you expect?

    Copyright © 1978-2025 Berkshire Hathaway Inc.

by tharkun__

2/19/2026 at 1:24:04 PM

did Warren Buffet code this himself?

by dudefeliciano

2/19/2026 at 8:56:33 PM

Yes, he used punch cards and a System 360.

by nurettin

2/18/2026 at 6:41:35 PM

Incredibly clear and direct. Amazing to see a big company like that keeping it so old school. Thanks for pointing it out!

by chickensong

2/19/2026 at 5:12:37 AM

And it looks the same with and without Javascript enabled. Unlike 99% of all web sites which are anything from shite through to blank pages without JS.

by pseudohadamard

2/18/2026 at 6:46:19 PM

I half expected to see an "under construction" gif and a "powered by GeoCities" tag at the bottom

by scottious

2/18/2026 at 6:59:03 PM

It's definitely missing a website hits counter.

by forinti

2/18/2026 at 11:02:58 PM

I want the blinking fuchsia marque in H1 italic Comic Sans on a yellow starry night animated GIF background.

by burnt-resistor

2/19/2026 at 3:44:05 AM

with embedded MIDI sound effects and looping background music

by 1659447091

2/19/2026 at 2:51:09 PM

Click next for the next site in our webring!

by ethbr1

2/19/2026 at 3:38:24 PM

geocities and netcom personal pages.

by burnt-resistor

2/19/2026 at 10:05:56 PM

Sign my guestbook!

by 1659447091

2/18/2026 at 8:08:08 PM

Why?

This doesn’t give the vibes of an amateur personal site - it’s a timeless business site.

by DANmode

2/19/2026 at 2:59:19 PM

Not sure I agree with "timeless." This site is like opening a time capsule.

by nozzlegear

2/19/2026 at 2:59:56 PM

99/100 Lighthouse performance score.

Good reminder that every web page starts off fast by default and is only made slow by designers and frameworks.

by xnx

2/18/2026 at 6:40:49 PM

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">

This brings back some (unpleasant) memories.

But otherwise I admire the minimalism.

by leapingdog

2/19/2026 at 2:48:34 PM

My first visit to the Berkshire Hathaway website a few years ago literally changed my life. I was immediately attracted. I went to search Buffett and went down the rabbit hole of shareholder meetings clips and value investing and index investing. I am so much richer mentally and financially now thanks to the random visit to this website.

by meyum33

2/18/2026 at 7:59:08 PM

My god, static text with no graphics!? In 2026!?

by JTbane

2/18/2026 at 9:25:14 PM

They have a long tradition of keeping it simple going back long before the web. The annual reports had no pictures or puffery unlike most companies, though much better writing.

by tim333

2/18/2026 at 10:43:52 PM

Except geicoimg.gif, lol

I almost want to let Warren know he could have an entire extra egg McMuffin per year if he switches to SVG rendering of the Geico logo on the site.

by DANmode

2/18/2026 at 10:56:02 PM

8.3 naming scheme too

by webdevver

2/18/2026 at 8:44:01 PM

"If you have any comments about our WEB page, you can write us at the address shown above. However, due to the limited number of personnel in our corporate office, we are unable to provide a direct response."

by weichi

2/18/2026 at 6:29:16 PM

I wonder how much Geico payed for that add placement…

by buildbot

2/18/2026 at 6:30:03 PM

They own GEICO...

by anana_

2/18/2026 at 6:55:05 PM

Oh; well that’s embarrassing haha

by buildbot

2/18/2026 at 11:21:38 PM

Nah, you can bet there's a tax break in there somewhere

by conorcleary

2/18/2026 at 6:32:06 PM

he owns geico

by ewild

2/18/2026 at 6:43:08 PM

it's certainly fast!!

by enmyj

2/18/2026 at 6:01:34 PM

Maybe the novelty of Amazon has worn off. I occasionally purchase from their UK site, and it’s filled with tricks to get me to sign up for Prime upon checkout. Really horrible workflow and design decisions, cheapening the experience. I now see similar changes to the US version: ‘you saved $15 in shipping by being a Prime member with this purchase’ and ‘last year you made 211 sustainable product purchases’.

Guys, quit being so desperate. Concentrate on quality items at competitive pricing and fast delivery. Don’t turn into TJ Maxx.

My Echo, that I use solely to voice activating lights and switches, is now an ad machine and one bad day away from going in the trash. Next time you do a wave of layoffs, please include everyone involved in these horrible decisions.

by xvxvx

2/18/2026 at 6:12:31 PM

> My Echo, that I use solely to voice activating lights and switches, is now an ad machine

I've been wondering if it is even possible for a publicly-traded company to deliver a voice assistant product without these incentives involved. I have to imagine the UX of these devices would be much different if they were built by a private company without the same market pressures. It would need to be self-contained and local, so that the infrastructure burden (e.g., data and AI in the cloud) wouldn't create a need for subscription service or data collection revenue to cover the cost.

by evmaki

2/18/2026 at 6:28:14 PM

This is why devices that are basically loss leaders should always be illegal. The end value product is an update that will come later down the line that screws everything up.

For those considering smart home devices, please just buy a home assistant device. It is easy for the non-technical and also not that much more expensive

by vablings

2/18/2026 at 10:45:10 PM

Matter/Thread is reasonably good with Apple Home. The more adventurous can also dual-join it to Home Assistant running on the same Thread network. It surprisingly just works, though the dual-controller setup still involves a little initial suffering.

by init2null

2/19/2026 at 12:35:09 AM

I am using Matter/Thread with Home Assistant and the new ZBT-2. No Apple Home integration! Although I will say that homekit with the Home Assistant bridge is very good! Kudos to Apple

by vablings

2/19/2026 at 3:04:26 PM

> I've been wondering if it is even possible for a publicly-traded company to deliver a voice assistant product without these incentives involved. I have to imagine the UX of these devices would be much different if they were built by a private company without the same market pressures.

Apple's HomePods have never had ads and don't require a subscription/data collection to control home devices.

by nozzlegear

2/19/2026 at 5:42:07 PM

But you have to interface with the software delight known as Siri

by utdoctor

2/19/2026 at 7:07:24 PM

True! I'm one of the lucky ones that Siri just understands every time, so I have no complaints. My wife's Siri usage is hit or miss though.

by nozzlegear

2/18/2026 at 7:32:59 PM

Amazon has been quite useful for me as a single bachelor living in an Indian metropolitan city.

1. I get very useful items at very good prices, many of which I would have to wander the city for hours to find, or couldnt find at all: - Eg: I got a pair of adjustable dumbbells at <2K INR. Some of you would call it a cheap knock. But it has been super useful and I would have not bought it if it cost 8k INR. I brought a whole bosch repair toolkit at good price and it has been invaluable for fixing electric/plumbing etc.. issues. I got a high volume travel bag - I didn't even know 40L travel bags existed and wouldnt have brought one if not for amazon. I could go on.

2. Amazon Fresh is usually cheaper for groceries and maintain consistent quality compared to local supermarkets. I will also avoid the need to walk long with the grocery bag.

3. Electronics are significantly cheaper on amazon and again the need to search.

Maybe all of this can be even better as you said. But bottom line is that their operations look pretty efficient to me. Their catalogue is pretty much unmatched. (They may be losing money on retail business - but that's not my position to care as a customer. As other commenter pointed out, it may not even matter much for stock price.)

by never_inline

2/18/2026 at 8:10:08 PM

amz is beholden to cheap products and labor. you have both in india.

elsewhere it's awful, for the exact same features you describe.

they even bought a premium supermarket chain so their produce stop being returned in the US.

by iririririr

2/18/2026 at 9:17:40 PM

Yeah this is something really beautiful about India: life is cheap and there are tons of desperate people who will kill themselves for you.

In the Netherlands you'll be waiting an hour for your meal to be delivered by a bored teenager on an ebike. And you're going to be grateful.

by TitaRusell

2/18/2026 at 11:00:45 PM

> In the Netherlands you'll be waiting an hour for your meal to be delivered by a bored teenager on an ebike

It takes less than an hour to make a dinner oneself

by kombine

2/19/2026 at 12:53:01 AM

Yeah, but then you have to make dinner. Delivery is asynchronous.

by gzread

2/19/2026 at 11:24:28 AM

I'm a big fan of Amazon (UAE), in the sense that I buy stuff from Amazon almost every week. Having said that, in the last year or so, I found myself returning items more and more often. I get books damaged in shipping, wrong color items, wrong size shoes, empty boxes without the actual item, all sorts of weird failure modes. Marketplace sellers are definitely a big factor. As a response, lately I find myself thinking defensively when ordering from Amazon, like "what can go wrong", and pondering whether I should go out and find this in a store, buy from the brand's online store, get it off Ebay, etc.

by Maro

2/18/2026 at 6:50:07 PM

Amazon has become a marketplace for cheap sometimes harmful chinese knockoffs. Amazon doesn't even check what is being sold. I only order directly from places I trust. http://nbcnews.com/business/recall/cheap-chinese-faucets-dan...

by password54321

2/19/2026 at 12:21:47 AM

I want to know how you can be a trillion dollar tech company with unlimited access to all the best minds and AI tools and whatever… and still have a busted-ass mobile app fronting their store. For YEARS.

by dd8601fn

2/18/2026 at 8:44:29 PM

My peak number of orders p.a was in 2023: 215 orders

In 2025 it was 27 orders

I expect it to be even lower this year. I didn't even buy my eero router upgrade from Amazon.

I largely attribute this to poor quality products, horrible search interface, trying to sort through the dropship spam, and prices no longer being as competitive.

Amazon used to have decent-quality "amazon native" brands like Anker, Eufy, Eero etc. but there are better alternatives to buying all of these products now

by nikcub

2/19/2026 at 12:14:46 AM

I never thought I would say this, but Walmart is worlds better than Amazon for buying regular stuff. Their logistics are better, you have to wade through a lot less no-name trash to find the thing you wanted, and their Prime-like membership works across shopping and grocery. Also, it’s cheaper.

by dd8601fn

2/18/2026 at 7:30:49 PM

These just aren't the relevant concerns behind Amazon's stock performance in the last month. It's the capex.

by aetherson

2/18/2026 at 10:43:18 PM

Markets can’t see the product quality of a monopoly. It won’t be reflected in the metrics because there’s no competition to anchor the earnings to the real consumer value. But that doesn’t mean quality isn’t a factor- it makes them vulnerable to disruption.

Warren Buffett is known to trade on product quality (he buys what he uses). So his sale could be based on that.

by jacobjjacob

2/19/2026 at 9:08:32 AM

Amazon isn't a monopoly, it has 8% of retail in the US.

There's no real evidence that this trade was made by Buffet himself, and it's part of a general major sell-off of Amazon that transparently did not temporally align with the idea that Amazon's retail business has suffered a decline in quality.

This is the market making a (reasonable!) judgment that it lacks confidence that Amazon's capital expenditures will pay off.

by aetherson

2/18/2026 at 6:15:03 PM

Amazon has become AliExpress at this point, so I just skip the middleman half the time

by drstewart

2/18/2026 at 6:27:09 PM

It's a shame that all these stores have such a terrible UI/UX.

Amazon is pretty good at optimizing buying things but outside of that everything else sucks really bad especially on mobile

by vablings

2/19/2026 at 3:22:20 AM

Amazon had better return policies. I suspect that is gone. I'll probably buy even less from Amazon, anymore.

I've gotten 2 different "You didn't return the right item" because I presume some underpaid, overworked contractor at the Amazon return site lost it or stole it.

Fortunately, the second one is very well documented, so Amazon is going to lose badly if they don't figure out what is going on.

by bsder

2/18/2026 at 9:42:35 PM

That's what I call it, "American AliExpress" lol

by amatecha

2/18/2026 at 8:22:51 PM

> Don’t turn into TJ Maxx.

They are the TJ Maxx of software development.

I personally haven’t expected anything more of them for years. Once you’ve seen how the sausage is made and all that.

by bespokedevelopr

2/18/2026 at 7:29:22 PM

I still like to buy my cheap and esoteric Chinese stuff from Amazon. It's a good balance of not-too-slow-delivery and not-too-expensive for very specific stuff. And it's easy to return if it doesn't work.

Example last purchase: An optical SPDIF/TOSLINK to 3.5 mm DAC box (5V/USB-powered) to put behind the TV with a broken/very low quality audio output. It was about $15 including 25% VAT. Probably like $5 on Aliexpress, but I didn't want to wait 6-8 weeks.

Never really buy anything for more than $50 from them though. And never anything containing Li-Ion batteries.

by lysace

2/18/2026 at 8:49:08 PM

In Europe, most of Aliexpress delivery is 10 days (except during Chinese New Year).

by homarp

2/19/2026 at 5:46:45 PM

It's a bit longer in Canada (probably 3-4 weeks is what I usually see), but interestingly sometimes they're faster than Amazon-shipped stuff despite the former shipping from China.

by pyreko

2/18/2026 at 9:00:18 PM

I think that varies a lot by country/national post service?

by lysace

2/19/2026 at 1:23:07 AM

I guess so, in Brazil some deliveries arrives after 15 days, but it's that after the government increased taxes on products wanting any company which delivers to be legal compliant.

by brunoarueira

2/18/2026 at 7:41:11 PM

I have two Alexas but never get ads.

How is it that you’re getting ads?

by wenc

2/18/2026 at 8:02:47 PM

Are they the echo show? I don't get ads on my dots but the show shows ads most of the time, when I really want it to show the clock face instead.

Region might matter. I set it to Australia/New Zealand region and for about a year it didn't show ads. But it does, now, even though it talks with an Australian accent.

by projektfu

2/18/2026 at 7:58:51 PM

The Alexa's with video screen will start to show ads no matter now many times you set it to no ads. There are settings for No Ads, and after a few days, that setting is reset to allow ads. I had one so I could quickly see my Blink camera, but I threw it away because it kept showing ads.

by genghisjahn

2/18/2026 at 9:02:03 PM

Did you actually throw it away or returned it?

by fshr

2/19/2026 at 3:51:07 AM

In the trash.

by genghisjahn

2/18/2026 at 11:27:46 PM

Amazon went all in robotics they have their ai training chips, they build their own satellite starlinks and run the one if the 3 clouds.

by arisAlexis

2/18/2026 at 7:45:11 PM

Amazon is Walmart for progressives.

by GorbachevyChase

2/18/2026 at 8:04:33 PM

Everyone raced to the bottom so now Walmart almost feels better than the rest. I have somewhat more confidence in products I search there, or at least I can tell when the seller may be shady.

by projektfu

2/19/2026 at 3:06:36 PM

Bizarre comparison

by nozzlegear

2/18/2026 at 8:09:09 PM

They're an ads company now. Not a store. Not a device vendor.

by zerotolerance

2/18/2026 at 8:12:10 PM

I mean if I want two day/fast shipping, it's still the only place that can do it without costing me $45, and even then a lot of places won't get it in the mail that fast. They also have a much more reliable and robust return policy, which is a headache for other sites. While I agree the experience has worsened it's still the best online store as far as I'm aware

by guywithahat

2/18/2026 at 7:44:25 PM

My view of Amazon's decline comes from being a "partner" in their seller and publisher ecosystems for years.

The seller platforms in particular (Brand Registry, Vendor Central, Seller Central, Transparency, etc.) have crippling levels of technical debt. The situation has only gotten worse with Jassy's reckless directive for the entire organization to push into Generative AI (https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/amazon-ceo-and...). So much basic stuff is just breaking down, and seller support is overwhelmed or unable to intervene to fix the mess.

You can see a small sample here involving problems with product attributes (https://sellercentral.amazon.com/seller-forums/discussions?s...). Google "Amazon AWD delays" or "Amazon CSBA problems" or "Amazon remote fulfillment problems" to see examples of programs that are unable to provide even basic levels of the services promised to sellers.

Meanwhile, Amazon has been so greedy with fees since Jassy took over that sellers of all sizes and many small to midsized brands are being squeezed out of existence or driven off Amazon. Its PPC ad platform is completely predatory, loaded with dark patterns and hidden defaults that add billions to top-line revenue while strip-mining the accounts of sellers who often have no choice but to participate in the auctions.

It's clear that Amazon is running scared when it comes to dealing with new competition, including the Chinese shopping sites and the looming prospect of agentic AI and other new AI-powered shopping tools eating its lunch. For the first time ever last month, I saw an Amazon search results (via Rufus) that actually directed shoppers to third-party brand sites. This would have been heresy 5 years ago.

by ilamont

2/19/2026 at 5:11:04 AM

Amazon turned me off selling completely. I was subjected to an obvious fraudulent buyer on a high value item ($5k) and they did everything in their power to make it as painful as possible for me to fight:

- An A-Z claim from the buyer was denied by Amazon for fraud (supposed non-delivery of the item), yet their returns department auto-approved a return for the same order just 12 days later.

- The customer returned a completely different item with documented serial number/weight discrepancies and seller-provided video evidence, yet I was left with no recourse.

- The customer then filed a fraudulent credit card chargeback. I won the first round, but Amazon refuses to participate in second-round disputes - so despite overwhelming evidence of five separate fraud attempts, they sent a generic email and docked $5k from my seller account.

- Amazon then refused to answer any further communications, including basic disclosure of which card issuer was involved or what evidence was submitted - making any independent appeal impossible.

- Every dispute stage (A-Z, returns, chargebacks) required rebuilding the fraud case from scratch. Zero continuity, and zero care for an independent seller with a strong track record of sales and feedback.

by lavezzi

2/18/2026 at 8:50:39 PM

Oh god, was working within seller central when brand registry was being spun up. Id rather not relive some of those experiences (or use them).

by Nicook

2/18/2026 at 8:28:22 PM

Blaming AI for Amazon’s accelerating downturn is a cop-out. This has been going on long before genAI was allowed there. Even now many teams within the products you called out aren’t using it at all.

by bespokedevelopr

2/18/2026 at 7:52:47 PM

> Its PPC ad platform is completely predatory, loaded with dark patterns and hidden defaults that add billions to top-line revenue while strip-mining the accounts of sellers who often have no choice but to participate in the auctions.

At least they mark ads as 'sponsored', even though it isn't super prominent.

I always scroll until I see organic results, myself.

by mooreds

2/18/2026 at 8:29:44 PM

They mark some of them. Not all of them. Last article I read said 80% of placements on the search results page are paid ads. And they only mark like 4-5 of them as "sponsored"

by malfist

2/19/2026 at 10:05:30 PM

That's ... not great.

Thanks for the heads up.

by mooreds

2/18/2026 at 8:31:34 PM

I think Amazon should cede the cheap chineesium to Temu or SHEIN and focus on its own products and products from companies who actually exist

by mghackerlady

2/18/2026 at 6:23:33 PM

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?

by paxys

2/18/2026 at 7:57:29 PM

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.

by epolanski

2/19/2026 at 12:56:33 AM

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.

by gzread

2/19/2026 at 2:26:07 AM

Modesty is as important as not making bad bets.

by DANmode

2/18/2026 at 6:33:23 PM

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).

by drob518

2/18/2026 at 7:53:47 PM

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

by koolba

2/18/2026 at 6:30:57 PM

Amazon's core business does not make sense. Despite being so massive, their retail operation makes almost no money. There is little market share left for them to win, the best they can do to grow is shave expenses.

AWS has been their real money maker, but also the explosion of AI and server farms has worked against them in threes ways: there is much more competition on infrastructure, the costs to run infrastructure keep going up, if you're looking for a growth industry there are other more appealing stocks now to park your capital.

by legitster

2/18/2026 at 6:36:00 PM

> Amazon's core business does not make sense. Despite being so massive, their retail operation makes almost no money.

Net profit margins for retail are only around 3% across the industry.

Amazon isn't actually doing anything unusual in that regard. Retail is just a very low profit margin business whether it's physical or online.

These numbers are always confusing to those of us in the tech world where SaaS net profit margins are always very high.

by Aurornis

2/18/2026 at 6:44:27 PM

This is correct, but it doesn't explain why Amazon would have a 2x market cap over Walmart when they both roughly make the same revenue.

You have to believe that Amazon is poised for much higher growth than they are to justify their current stock price.

by legitster

2/18/2026 at 7:17:11 PM

> This is correct, but it doesn't explain why Amazon would have a 2x market cap over Walmart when they both roughly make the same revenue

Because Amazon and Walmart are two different companies with very different product offerings.

Retail can only grow so far. AWS continues to grow at a relatively incredible rate compared to Walmart's business.

by Aurornis

2/18/2026 at 6:49:16 PM

These are different businesses. Walmart has a massive retail footprint, where Amazon does not.

Amazon’s huge 3p seller network means it can offer advertising as a revenue stream in a way Walmart can’t compete with.

by tyre

2/18/2026 at 7:40:00 PM

Amazon's free cash flow rises year over year (apart from the post-COVID period) [0] while Walmart's doesn't [1] and price multiples are largely determined by expected FCF over time not directly revenue/EBITDA. FCF rain or shine maps roughly onto possibility of paying out dividends/buybacks, which determines the value of an equity in capital markets ("discounted present value of a company's future cash flows").

[0] https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AMZN/amazon/free-c... [1] https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/WMT/walmart/free-c...

by agentcoops

2/18/2026 at 6:57:06 PM

Their business models are increasingly converging with both generative revenue through seller fees, subscriptions, and advertising. Amazon is ahead in most of these areas and also has the higher margin revenue from AWS. Amazon also has a large base of prime subscribers they can sell incremental services to.

by nikkev

2/18/2026 at 7:13:31 PM

> ”it doesn't explain why Amazon would have a 2x market cap over Walmart when they both roughly make the same revenue.”

Why does Tesla have 15x the market cap of BYD, despite BYD selling more cars, having more revenue, and much faster revenue growth?

by Reason077

2/18/2026 at 7:23:35 PM

Comparing to Walmart, though, I would expect higher growth. Would you not?

by taeric

2/18/2026 at 7:20:54 PM

>You have to believe that Amazon is poised for much higher growth than they are to justify their current stock price.

How many decades now have we lived in a world where the demand for investment far outstrips sane investment opportunities? In such a world, do stock prices have to be justified as you insinuate? And what happens when the prices are far higher than can be justified? I ask not rhetorically, but rather whether I should be hoarding shotgun shells and canned goods and hiding in the basement.

by NoMoreNicksLeft

2/18/2026 at 7:06:35 PM

Walmart doesn’t have a cloud computing side business that’s wildly profitable.

by mullingitover

2/18/2026 at 6:49:02 PM

> There is little market share left for them to win

Despite controlling about 40% of US online retail, Amazon only has about an 8% share of total US retail. There’s still plenty of room to grow here.

https://www.emarketer.com/content/amazon-will-surpass-40-of-...

by evanjacobs

2/18/2026 at 8:06:52 PM

What is there for Amazon to grow? They're closing their physical fresh stores etc. Is the intention to compete with Walmart and Dollar General?

by KittenInABox

2/18/2026 at 7:31:37 PM

I'm down to about one Walmart trip per year. It may have been as many as 3 years since I've been inside Target. Kmart is a dusty memory. On my last Walmart trip, it is a shabby caricature of what I remember from the early 2000s (maybe even on up into 2011 or 2012. I can't be sure, but I believe aisles have been made wider so they could fit fewer shelves and keep those looking fuller. What fills them is the cheapest looking junk I have ever seen, and I had no favorable opinion of Walmart's goods to start with. Truly much of it looks like the sort of trinkety crap you would have found at flea markets and gas stations years ago. Target was (3 years ago) still worse, I think they do most of their ordering off of Temu.

If there is something I might prefer to not wait on Amazon for, I will not find it at Walmart even if I remember Walmart once carrying that product. This is without fail. Each new (rare) trip to Walmart reinforces the lesson.

I have never been fond of Walmart's grocery department. I suspect (long ago) that they were able to sell produce 1 cent cheaper than anyone else by buying the least-wanted, unsold inventory from agricultural distributors, and the quality always reflected that theory. I could buy strawberries from Walmart, buy them again from the local grocery chain 10 minutes later, put them in the fridge simultaneously. And the Walmart-bought produce was slimy the next day, the grocery store produce not (unless I stacked the Walmart clamshell on the grocery store one... cross-contamination).

Worse still, they have reduced their personnel to skeleton crews, all shifts. The stores tend to look like they were looted after hurricanes. I do not know how anyone shops at Walmart, and it scares me that if my circumstances were less agreeable I might be forced to shop there too. Walmart might aim for stealing marketshare from Dollar General as a growth strategy, the overlap must be nearly absolute.

by NoMoreNicksLeft

2/18/2026 at 6:43:38 PM

> Despite being so massive, their retail operation makes almost no money

You misunderstand the point of retail. It's now a marketplace where they use their name recognition and (alleged) consumer friendliness to collect fees from sellers. It costs to list, it costs to do FBA, and it costs to run ads so that your products appear in search results. Amazon ads is incredibly profitable.

That's also why Prime has such a grab bag of benefits. By keeping Prime membership sticky, the overall value of that marketplace supports the fees charged to sellers.

by coredog64

2/19/2026 at 7:13:53 AM

It's not that bad. From a finance and accounting perspective, Amazon’s retail business provides strong synergies with its cloud services. Although the retail segment has a relatively low net profit margin, it generates stable and substantial cash flow for the company. In contrast, cloud services are highly profitable but require significant upfront investment in hardware, and the associated asset depreciation is substantial.

By combining these two businesses, Amazon can achieve a more balanced capital structure. Compared to other cloud service providers such as Oracle, Amazon can maintain a lower debt-to-equity ratio, reduce its debt burden, and sustain stronger overall financial health. At the same time, it can achieve higher overall profit margins compared to traditional retailers like Walmart.

by aaronsung

2/18/2026 at 6:37:38 PM

Their profit margin on retail is similar to other discount retailers like Walmart. Retail just doesn’t have huge margins.

by zeroonetwothree

2/18/2026 at 6:37:46 PM

I am not so sure this is an accurate analysis? Notably, a major thing that kept it so that retail made no money, was the massive expense of expanding the retail operations. That is, expanding retail footprint is a massive cost. And you have to expand if you want to reach more customers.

This is different from AWS where your reach is essentially "all of the internet" for anything that you launch. But this really just meant that reinvesting the revenue from AWS was harder for them to do, compared to revenue from retail. As a result, they didn't. Not nearly as aggressively.

by taeric

2/18/2026 at 7:14:11 PM

Relevant data point on AWS - GCP is giving out a ton of cloud credits to startups. On average $100k in comparison to $10k-20k from AWS.

Before Claude Code, a full cloud migration could easily be a couple months. We migrated our whole stack to GCP in about a week. It's trivial to switch clouds now with K8 stack and Claude Code.

by mfrye0

2/18/2026 at 7:18:42 PM

> There is little market share left for them to win, the best they can do to grow is shave expenses.

I think Amazon netted something like $70 billion last year. What's the problem with them just staying the course and earning tens of billions of dollars in profit year-after-year-after-year?

by criddell

2/18/2026 at 7:29:22 PM

Number must go up. It's a problem with capitalism in general.

by saulpw

2/18/2026 at 9:21:46 PM

Trying to make every business have software margins is going to destroy society.

by tracerbulletx

2/18/2026 at 11:06:27 PM

Private equity, consultants, and the pedophile class are eagerly awaiting it.

by burnt-resistor

2/18/2026 at 6:32:57 PM

they could improve their product search page so it's actually useful

by novia

2/18/2026 at 6:36:17 PM

They say one of the reasons supermarkets move isles layout is so people don’t learn to navigate the store and they put milk in the back to make sure people have to walk the isles.

The purpose is to get shoppers to look at more stuff and impulse buy.

I honestly believe search is bad for the same reason.

by wodenokoto

2/18/2026 at 6:41:39 PM

It's useful for making sellers pay for promoted product positions

by wlesieutre

2/18/2026 at 6:40:20 PM

Depends how you define their "core business" I suppose.

You're right, but their retail business does support the bulk of their ad business which is extremely profitable. Arguably it might actually make sense for them to run their retail business as a loss leader to support their high-margin ad business.

by kypro

2/18/2026 at 6:35:55 PM

They could just increase prices. They deliver fast (often same day) and always accept my returns. Add 5% to prices, pure margin.

by monero-xmr

2/18/2026 at 7:23:55 PM

Here is a Berkshire Hathaway portfolio tracker if anyone is interested:

https://www.quiverquant.com/institutions/BERKSHIRE%20HATHAWA...

Berkshire also sold around $2.8B of Apple stock, although that was a much smaller move as a percentage of their position.

by ckardat123

2/18/2026 at 7:30:10 PM

So 60% of this portfolio is in just 4 stocks? Apple, American Express, BofA, and Chevron. Didn't expect that.

by francisofascii

2/19/2026 at 6:59:13 PM

Core America. World banking, world payments, oil/gas and tech. Maybe Apple's one is a bit too ambitious and the oil/gas tech makes sense only for now as there doesn't seem to be anything that reliable in the renewables space in terms of stock.

by bossyTeacher

2/18/2026 at 10:14:49 PM

I have a simple lagging indicator for the US economy, and it's this: when the ads you see focus on price not features, and especially of food, the economy is in a hole and no amount of government sunshine (from either party) persuades me otherwise. In those times, head towards essentials. Food, consumer staples, healthcare. Stay out of tech.

We have ads now for discounts at Taco Bell. Not even Pizza Hut. Taco Bell!

The US economy for regular people is not good.

by kjellsbells

2/18/2026 at 6:29:39 PM

Warren Buffet retired. This is Berkshire Hathaway.

by philip1209

2/18/2026 at 7:23:56 PM

He's in the office every day. I bet they at least ran this by him.

by c22

2/18/2026 at 6:47:04 PM

My understanding is that Warren gave up his seat as CEO but is still the chairman, and is still at least peripherally involved in investment decisions at Berkshire

by stackghost

2/18/2026 at 7:11:42 PM

Also these are year end portfolio changes, so could very well be Warren.

by s-kymon

2/18/2026 at 7:48:57 PM

The purchasing experience when you buy direct from companies now is usually much easier than it was years ago. A lot of people instinctively turn to Amazon because its one click and stuff is on its way, but with the new payment integrations even small companies have a pretty close to 1 click experience as well. So when I think of buying something on Amazon I always check the actual brands website first now, because I don't want to support Amazon at all or force sellers to eat the overhead.

by JMKH42

2/18/2026 at 7:50:03 PM

A surprisingly large percentage of products on Amazon are now companies that sell only a small number of very specific things and have a name like KUFLPOW.

by LeoPanthera

2/18/2026 at 7:54:52 PM

Yup, they are called Chinese-all-caps. Or that’s at least how I call them. Get bad reviews? Generate a new CAC name and start over. Rinse and repeat. Same product made by one factory in China sold by 100s of CAC Amazon entities.

by rdtsc

2/18/2026 at 8:53:46 PM

The complete failure of the brand initiative cannot be overstated.

by Nicook

2/18/2026 at 11:50:56 PM

Yeah, that is baffling to me, the complete not giving a shit attitude. I couldn't do that, I'd start marketing and nurturing my MGKGUPXYZ brand and try to make customers happy. Which is probably why I'd fail in that marketplace right away.

by rdtsc

2/18/2026 at 8:46:40 PM

Looks like Berkeshire Hathaway is one way to invest in US shares ex-AI. Except for their smallish holding in Google, they now don't own the big AI spenders, whose shares have risen so much in the past year.

I guess they don't see value in Amazon shares any more. AI spend will probably hit their aws profits.

Note that the listing of shares they own doesn't include the companies that are subsidiaries. Like Geico and other insurance companies, BNSF Railway, Berkshire Hathaway Energy, etc.

by kristianp

2/18/2026 at 9:31:35 PM

In the dot com boom and crash Berkshire stock moved opposite to the nasdaq hitting its year low on the same day the nasdaq peaked.

by tim333

2/18/2026 at 7:27:20 PM

There is only so much cash a company can burn.

Amazon spent last year 100B in Capex. They announced they will spend 200B this year. These numbers are INSANE. Greater than GDPs of entire countries.

They literally don't have the cash to do it. Either they need to grow their cash flow significantly, or deplete their cash reserves or take a huge loan (likely a combination of them).

Jassy is playing Russian roulette with the company and his career.

by whatever1

2/18/2026 at 7:37:19 PM

> They literally don’t have the cash to do it.

I don’t understand this? Amazon is a profitable company, on the scale of tens of billions of dollars per quarter. They very literally do have the cash.

Am I missing some subtlety in their financial reporting?

by pgwhalen

2/18/2026 at 7:42:40 PM

They have 86.8 B cash but are going to spend 200 B this year.

by MrDarcy

2/18/2026 at 8:49:47 PM

What is that spend compared against though? They already spend hundreds of billions of on various things in a year, but what is the marginal spend?

When you present these numbers alongside each other, you imply that they will go from making ~$20b/quarter to losing ~$30b/quarter, which is not plausible to me.

by pgwhalen

2/18/2026 at 9:37:24 PM

You can have a profitable business but be cash flow negative. Similar to how someone can have assets but have no cash.

Yes 100B in capex is unprecedented for Amazon (let alone 200). Last time they peaked Capex was at ~60B in 2021 when they decided to double their supply chain network.

So the marginal capex on gpus is likely 70-80% of their total capex

by whatever1

2/18/2026 at 7:45:34 PM

Yeah, a quick Google tells me that Amazon is holding 123 Billion in cash and marketable securities

by awesome_dude

2/18/2026 at 7:40:00 PM

Just considering alternatives on that sort of numbers. Billions just letting that money sit. And if you want more than that and actually to pay it back in say 10 or 20 years... Which I question with some capex stuff going around... It just doesn't make sense for my poor engineering brain.

by Ekaros

2/18/2026 at 6:23:27 PM

Amazon is pretty volatile stock at the moment, as are most companies that chase the AI bandwagon. I don’t think Amazon is doomed but the companies chasing AI are in for a rough time.

Plus continuing waves of layoffs will lead to more frequent and longer AWS outages, and lower quality of retail products will hurt that side of Amazon.

by Insanity

2/18/2026 at 8:19:29 PM

People predicted that about Twitter but it didn’t really happen

by LPisGood

2/18/2026 at 8:35:33 PM

That's because Twitter only really does one thing. Also, despite not having any hard stats twitter has been down an awful lot more these past few years

by mghackerlady

2/18/2026 at 6:09:52 PM

Next time Amazon goes low I'm sure he'll buy it all back at a discount. With all his wealth he can get away with slow patient investing with swathes of cash.

by giancarlostoro

2/18/2026 at 6:24:12 PM

Amazon just shed $450 billion in value. It's low right now.

by malfist

2/18/2026 at 6:43:14 PM

Not sure if they can all of a sudden buy it right now, at some point that starts looking like market manipulation. Wait a few years or months, see a ton of companies tank, buy at a discount. We've seen them do this several times.

by giancarlostoro

2/18/2026 at 7:21:50 PM

Another Prime membership fee increase, incoming!

by baggachipz

2/18/2026 at 8:24:30 PM

Who cares? This isn't wallstreetbsts.

by epolanski

2/18/2026 at 9:01:42 PM

Just to clarify because it seems like most of the comments aren't understanding. Berkshire sold the Amazon stock in the fourth quarter of last year meaning it is likely the last large move Warren Buffett is going to make as head of Berkshire as he stepped down on December 31 of 2025. That's why the article is titled that way and partly why its significant. Warren Buffett has traditionally been averse to tech stocks but picked up a slug of Amazon in 2019.

by CoolestBeans

2/18/2026 at 7:51:38 PM

Did Amazon hit any major setbacks? Like some antitrust issue? There was talk in Europe about how Amazon should be legally responsible for everything sold on the platform in terms of safety, authenticity and so on even if things are sold directly by third parties. Has that actually happened anywhere? It would make sense but it feels like it would be a financial blow to amazon.

by alkonaut

2/18/2026 at 10:22:48 PM

Interesting how most people here (a hardcore tech site) are commenting on their experience with Amazon retail

by nfRfqX5n

2/18/2026 at 6:34:57 PM

It's right in the post, but just to save folks a click it's a 77% drawdown in the position so it's a substantial move. I see they also trimmed Apple, but, for comparison's sake, looks like that was only a decrease of 4.3% of the position.

by harmmonica

2/18/2026 at 6:20:12 PM

Adding the obligatory disclaimer: Berkshire Hathaway selling $1.7B of Amazon stock is likely a decision by Ted Weschler or Todd Combs, still notable but not necessarily Warren Buffett himself.

by divbzero

2/18/2026 at 7:28:24 PM

I’ve heard that Amazon’s capital expenditures have exceeded its annual cash flow, leading it to borrow and cut jobs to fund AI investments. Unlike Microsoft and Google, which appear able to fund capex internally, Amazon seems to be in a costly growth race with deeper-pocketed competitors. My view, this could mean continued heavy borrowing and limited to no profitability in the near term.

by sleepyguy

2/18/2026 at 8:05:32 PM

Please fix the title: Berkshire Hathway dumped it, not Warren Buffet.

by arunc

2/18/2026 at 10:28:55 PM

Makes sense. Amazon is making VERY bad investments just to pump Bezos' personal investments in related industries

by casey2

2/18/2026 at 8:06:43 PM

These clowns are trying to charge a family member for an item they received an incorrect item for,

and returned.

They need competition.

by DANmode

2/18/2026 at 7:47:17 PM

IMO AI is going to make buying things you need for your household without going through the clownshow that is Amazon a lot easier.

by siliconc0w

2/18/2026 at 11:26:48 PM

Like he understands tech

by arisAlexis

2/18/2026 at 6:40:12 PM

Berkshire, Not Buffet.

Also, why would anyone want to work at Amazon at this point?

One of the worst companies to join with the worst margins out of the big tech companies.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46809296

by rvz

2/18/2026 at 7:05:50 PM

Desperation and relatively high compensation.

Every friend I've ever had work for them was burnt out but stayed because they were too burnt out to look for a new job

by wifipunk

2/18/2026 at 8:14:12 PM

High comp, opportunity to work with unparalleled scale, interesting tech, high performance bar.

by tt24

2/18/2026 at 7:17:37 PM

[flagged]

by bau5

2/18/2026 at 8:06:15 PM

Can you enumerate which parties have been "harmed" by her donations, and the precise nature of the harm(s)?

by antonchekhov

2/18/2026 at 8:09:16 PM

I wasn't aware of her political donations. Can you say a little bit more on that?

by KittenInABox

2/18/2026 at 8:00:13 PM

> harmful donations…

Her philanthropic work and contributions focus on racial and LGBTQ+ equality, HBCUs, affordable housing, etc… Real “harmful” stuff there… /s

by kashunstva

2/18/2026 at 6:21:24 PM

After Amazon has been a great friend to the Trump administration, by partnering with Flock, by funding the Melania documentary to basically bribe Trump, etc - why should Americans or others trust them or give them business? Amazon isn’t that interesting anymore. You can buy most things directly from a trusted manufacturer or other websites. I don’t see them doing anything innovative at all. What’s the last useful thing they did - AWS? And that stopped being novel more than 10 years ago.

The problem is, megacorp with infinite capital get to make these massive mistakes and stumble through failure after failure, when everyday entrepreneurs get crushed for the tiniest problem.

by SilverElfin

2/18/2026 at 6:24:12 PM

> You can buy most things directly from a trusted manufacturer or other websites.

My experience over the last year has been the opposite. More and more of the specialized bits and pieces I need or want are only sold online via Amazon.

Extremely depressing.

by PaulDavisThe1st

2/18/2026 at 6:38:23 PM

I don't share the Amazon hate everyone has, I've had very good experiences with Amazon retail. But I do sometimes try to spread out my purchases to other vendors due to monopoly concerns.

It's amazing how many times you buy direct from a vendor and then it comes via Fulfilled by Amazon.

The other issue is when anything goes wrong I've had a hell of a time with some vendors. It's a crapshoot - some vendors ship quickly and competently, and handle customer service like returns quite well. Others you might end up with your product not even shipping for a week much less arriving, even though the store says "in stock ships tomorrow". Due to this, when I really must have something on time or if it's a risky purchase I have a good chance of needing to return I tend towards just getting it with Amazon.

A lot of smaller shops simply don't want to deal with logistics and customer service - it's hard to compete on Amazon for shipping costs. And warehouse/returns/etc. is just a nightmare for a small shop. I absolutely understand why a small speciality manufacturer with a few dozen low volume SKUs would prefer to just use FBA and be done with it.

by phil21

2/18/2026 at 6:45:27 PM

> it's hard to compete on Amazon for shipping costs.

Not so much that it is hard, as that Amazon more or less forces vendors on its platforms to eat shipping costs.

by PaulDavisThe1st

2/18/2026 at 8:16:24 PM

Good, I want the platform to squeeze vendors as much as possible. This is how consumers win

by tt24

2/18/2026 at 8:53:16 PM

We all wear multiple hats in our lives. Consumers. Citizens. Employees. Many more.

Amazon has been really good for us when we wear our consumer hats. Not so much when we wear the others.

by PaulDavisThe1st

2/18/2026 at 6:26:00 PM

You can count the number of times Jassy has lead amazon to an innovative new product during his tenure as CEO on zero hands.

by malfist

2/18/2026 at 6:48:25 PM

If you consider Amazon to be a retail company, then the comparison is with other retailers. When was the last time a retailer introduced an innovative new product? That's not what retailers do - they figure out where and how to sell <stuff>, other people make the <stuff> and it gets sold. The innovation happens to the <stuff>, not the retail.

Obviously, there are long term trends like the acceptance of credit cards that took place between the late 1970s and late 1980s in the US. But retail isn't exactly known for being a hotbed of innovation.

If you are thinking about other aspects of Amazon (obviously, AWS), then ... I can't comment on that.

by PaulDavisThe1st

2/18/2026 at 6:24:14 PM

“Why should Americans trust them”, I’d go further and say you shouldn’t trust any company.

by Insanity

2/18/2026 at 6:33:15 PM

Personally, I just buy stuff from a store and return it if I don’t like it. I don’t need to trust the store because the US has good enough consumer laws. It’s a store not my wife. I don’t need to have these ethical dilemmas over getting Coke Zero delivered.

by renewiltord

2/18/2026 at 6:09:48 PM

mamma mia! didn't he step down? very cool that he's back in the game

by mamma_mia

2/18/2026 at 6:13:37 PM

Warren Buffet stepped down as CEO from Berkshire Hathaway. He's still involved as Chairman with under 50% stake, afaik.

This was Berkshire Hathaway, not Warren Buffet, despite the misleading title.

by Supermancho