This morning, a number of big news sites have broadcast this message: Warren Buffett has announced his retirement, handing Berkshire Hathaway to Greg Abel and Ajit Jain.

Instantly, comments are flowing in – “Buffett finally conceded that he is too old”, “He is the latest casualty of the current bizarre situation in US markets”, “Value investing is finally dead”…

Quickly enough, a few raised their doubts: “wait a minute, I do not see any official announcement on the Berkshire Hathaway site, nor do I see any report from a mainstream Western media outlet”.

In turned out, the Chinese sites reported the news based on the following letter:

Well, this announcement is obviously hoax. It does not take more than five minutes to Google who David Scott Portnoy is.

Unfortunately, many online media outlets in China do not have the habit of verifying sources.

In addition, Baidu, the prevailing search engine in China in the absence of Google, is not very helpful.

When you Baidu “David Scott Portnoy”, the first thing that came out was the exact announcement mentioned about : 

 

 

—

Thanks for reading The Low Down (TLD), the blog by the team at Momentum Works. Got a different perspective or have a burning opinion to share? Let us know at [email protected].