Warren Buffett Buys Into a Different Amazon

Warren Buffett has repeatedly said he was an “idiot” for not buying stock of Amazon.com Inc. when the company was younger and its share price was lower. Now comes news that his Berkshire Hathaway Inc. plopped some shares of the e-commerce giant in its shopping cart, at a time when Amazon is shedding some but not all of the characteristics that made the Oracle of Omaha shun technology companies for years.

One of the investing lieutenants at Berkshire Hathaway — not Buffett himself, he stressed to CNBC — opted to buy Amazon shares for the firm in recent months, Buffett said on Thursday. He was very insistent that it wasn’t him doing the Amazon buying, perhaps because Buffett’s reputation as a lifetime proponent of value investing would be dinged by a purchase of Amazon stock.