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Now, today one of the most interesting things that happened in my lifetime was the rise of IBM and the fall of IBM. I was wrong in my original analysis. Somebody says to you they never made a mistake, you know, check them out. On the flip coin, IBM, last time we had talked to you you had sold many shares of IBM.
Are you still dubious about IBM's recovery process? Well, they may well do extremely well in the future, but I was wrong in my original analysis. And you know, that's my fault. So, five or six years ago, I thought that their prospects were going to be better in the next five or six years than they turned out to be, significantly better.
And uh so, I decided that that I had made a mistake. Uh that doesn't mean sometimes I make two mistakes. Sometimes I make a mistake when I buy and when I sell. But uh so, I I I still don't know that much about the future, but I feel I know more about I'm I feel more certain about the future as I look at a a company like Apple than when I look at IBM now.
Have you continued to sell IBM shares? Well, there again, nice try. We'll have to wait for the quarterly filings. There again, nice try. Let's talk about IBM for a moment. Yeah. Uh and you've said that it was a mistake and we all make mistakes. It was my biggest mistake. I make my fair share. But but let's go over what you learned from that mistake.
I mean, you as I say, generally you find businesses you believe in over the long term and management you believe in. What went wrong? Well, A, I I've made a lot of mistakes. There that's part of the game. I mean, there is no way in the investment business somebody says to you they never made a mistake, you know, check them out.
But that was a fairly large commitment and uh I would say that uh the competition But really fascinating to me actually is what what Amazon did with the cloud. I mean, here is a company that you don't even think of as being in that business 6 or 7 years ago. And and Jeff Bezos has really taken something like you wouldn't have thought they'd be doing that.
And and from a standing start and he has even said on Charlie Rose he was amazed at how much runway he was given. But here are a bunch of very smart people in the tech industry around him and not just IBM but and you know, Microsoft, Google, you name it. I mean, the people and uh uh they let they all let them have a big lead and you don't want to let a smart fellow have a big lead.
But what does that tell you about the tech sector in general when it comes to investing? Because it seems that tech may be more susceptible to massive disruption than other Yeah. run-of-the-mill businesses. Sure. I mean, we we've got a railroad and you know, we're we're not we're not going to wake up tomorrow and find four new railroads are competing with us or something.
This is And in the tech business you have a very a group of very smart people who have access to resources and they're all the time trying to figure out how to bring out a better product than you have. I mean, here you know, I may be carrying this around. But [panting] this may this was the hottest item around, I'm sure, at one time.
But Well, you you've got a big investment in Apple. You know they're coming out with the new iPhone. You might want to think about it this fall. yeah. Well, I Tim Tim Cook might have reminded me of that a few times. I'd say one of the most interesting things that happened in my lifetime was the rise of IBM and the fall of IBM.
IBM was the most admired company in America for most of my young life. They just marched from triumph to triumph to triumph. And uh in the last 10 or 15 years they've slipped and they've they're they're falling back in relation to other people in in their field. As the Apples and the Googles and so forth came ahead IBM just they kind of missed the boat.
I think that's almost inevitable. Kodak missed the boat of the change to digital photography, too. I've heard Bill Gates say that it's almost a rule when a really disruptive technology comes along the incumbents screw up their reaction to it. It's hard to change your ways when they've been successful for a long time. And go into a totally different way of behaving and thinking.
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