Tech stocks and the desire for the future

What our investment choices reveal about what we want to believe.

Every time I speak with entrepreneurs about portfolio allocation, the same funds surface: VOO, BRK.B, SCHD. The first a broad tech-weighted index, the second Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, the third dividend-focused. The pattern is telling. We don't invest purely rationally. We invest emotionally.

VOO embodies belief in American innovation. We see Nvidia, Microsoft, Alphabet and Apple, and we think: this is the future. That may be correct. But it's not analysis, it's faith. You don't need to understand what these companies do. You only need to believe that technology will save the world.

Berkshire Hathaway represents something different: conservative discipline. Buffett buys not the beautiful but the undervalued. He sat for years in cash, waiting for the moment tech would become expensive. That moment never quite came. Berkshire is the ship of Theseus for cautious Americans, owned by someone too clever to believe in trends.

SCHD, meanwhile, is a promise to yourself that you're truly patient. Dividends, compounding, repetition. It fits a particular Dutch idea of prosperity: not rush, but accumulate. Not speculative, but calculated.

What strikes me is that no one says: I'm buying VOO because I've actually calculated the true value of these companies. They say: I'm buying VOO because tech is the future. That's fact dressed as analysis. We seek refuge in numbers we don't fully understand, because numbers feel safe. They feel serious. They feel like control.

The paradox of modern investment is that we have more information than ever, and less grip on what we're doing. A fund manager with decades of experience cannot predict which tech stock will dominate in ten years better than you can. The illusion is that scale and volume representation means we're faster or smarter.

What interests me more is the why. Why do entrepreneurs invest in these three specific options? Because everyone does. Because it feels safe. Because it says: I am rational, I am cautious, I am growth-focused. All simultaneously. It's the investment equivalent of sushi: it looks like choice, feels like health, but is mainly trend implication.

I invest in VOO myself. Not because I understand Nvidia better than a year ago. But because I've realized I never understood it, and I'd rather admit I believe in a trend than pretend I'm doing calculus.

The honest answer to "why VOO, BRK.B or SCHD?" is: because I don't want to sound like someone who believes in crypto, and this is the next best thing. We are all, to varying degrees, seeking the feeling that we understand. Tech stocks give us that feeling. That is their real value.

Sources: Berkshire Hathaway Annual Shareholder Letter (2024); SEC filings VOO, SCHD