Omaha in 1999, on the eve of the craziest internet bubble. Someone at the Berkshire Hathaway shareholders' meeting, in front of tens of thousands of people, directly challenged Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger:

Why don't you take 10% and invest in the internet?
This shareholder stood up, with a tone filled with uncontainable pride and complaint.
He had invested his money into aggressive growth tech funds and doubled his money, perfectly offsetting his losses at Berkshire that year.
He questioned the two giants: You’re so smart, can’t you just take 10% and gamble in this market where you can make big money?
As shareholders, is this request too much?
Faced with the temptation of huge profits, Buffett’s answer hit the nail on the head: We will never buy things we don’t understand.
What is understanding? In Buffett’s dictionary, understanding means you have a reasonable probability of seeing through what this business will look like in ten years. If you can’t do that, even if others are making a fortune or criticizing you as stubborn, you absolutely shouldn’t touch it.
Buffett even humorously countered: Since you doubled your money, you can totally go solo and speculate freely.
You think earning less is a loss. But in reality, trying to catch every trend is precisely the beginning of big losses!
Money in the financial markets can never be exhausted, but your principal can be wiped out.
Buffett then pointed out the most common fatal mistake among retail investors: mistaking stock ticker movements for assets.
He said he and Munger never felt poorer or richer because of stock price fluctuations. They only care whether the company’s business itself is doing well. Treat the company as a private business that’s not listed; the stock price is just a constantly wrong reference quote.
Today it rises and you think you’re a stock god; tomorrow it falls and you think you’re a chump.
Once you truly understand the essence of assets, market quotes are just tools for you to profit from others’ emotions, not the masters of your emotions.
If you already have a large sum of wealth that makes your life comfortable, and someone across the street finds a method you don’t understand but makes them rich quickly—2 to 10 times faster—you should never feel distressed about it.
Our pain often isn’t because we lack money, but because others make money so easily.
Maintaining extreme indifference to money that doesn’t belong to you is the only antidote to financial anxiety. Money earned by luck often ends up lost by strength.
Whether it was the internet tech stocks of that year, the later blockchain cryptocurrencies, or the current AI frenzy, there are always people getting rich overnight.
But learning to block out these voices, focus on cultivating your own skill set—that’s true long-termism.