Warren Buffet in 1999 during the peak of the dot.com bubble

“It’s wonderful to promote new industries, because they are very promotable. It’s very hard to promote investment in a mundane product. It’s much easier to promote an esoteric product, even particularly one with losses, because there’s no quantitative guideline. But people will keep coming back to invest you know.

It reminds me a little of that story of the oil prospector who died and went to heaven. And St. Peter said, ‘Well, I checked you out, and you meet all of the qualifications. But there’s one problem.’ He said, ‘We have some tough zoning laws up here, and we keep all of the oil prospectors over in that pen. And as you can see it is absolutely chock-full. There is no room for you.’

And the prospector said, ‘Do you mind if I just say four words?’ St. Peter said, ‘No harm in that.’

So the prospector cupped his hands and yells out, ‘Oil discovered in hell!’ And of course, the lock comes off the cage and all of the oil prospectors start heading right straight down.

St. Peter said, ‘That’s a pretty slick trick. So,’ he says, ‘go on in, make yourself at home. All the room in the world.’

The prospector paused for a minute, then said, ‘No, I think I’ll go along with the rest of the boys. There might be some truth to that rumor after all.’