Big businesses have generally done very well, with travel and entertainment mentioned in a way the quote leaves unclear, though they still have difficulties.
Mixed Partly true and partly false in roughly equal measure.
Factual: Statements about the present or the past, checked against the record: did they hold up?
The second judge would not resolve this claim; the verdict shown is the first judge's.
What would count as true or false
Judged as of 2020-12-15. The claim is vague and about degree. True: evidence such as S&P 500 or large-cap earnings, revenue and stock performance for 2020 shows large businesses overall had done very well during the pandemic, while travel and entertainment firms were a notable exception with continuing difficulties. Mostly true: large businesses had broadly done well, with some qualifications on 'very well', and travel and entertainment were struggling. Mixed: performance of large businesses was roughly split, or 'very well' is clearly overstated though they did OK. Mostly false: most large businesses had done poorly, with only a narrow subset (e.g., big tech) doing very well, stated as general. False: large businesses generally did badly in 2020.
Set before the research began.
Evidence (2)
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E1 Driven by big tech's pandemic gains, S&P 500's 2020 surge masks uneven recovery S&P Global Market Intelligence · 4 January 2021
“The S&P 500 rose 18.4% on a total-return basis in 2020, but the rally was not felt in every sector. Outside the top 30 stocks by market cap, the index was flat in 2020.”
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E2 S&P 500 posted 2020 gains as COVID-19, oil price crash obliterated energy sector S&P Global Market Intelligence · 7 January 2021
“The benchmark's Energy Sector index value plummeted 37.3% while outperformers such as the Consumer Discretionary and Information Technology indexes rose 32.1% and 42.2%, respectively.”
Reasoning
E1 reports that the S&P 500 returned 18.4% in 2020, but outside the 30 largest stocks by market cap the index was flat. That fits large businesses doing OK overall while "very well" applies mainly to a small group at the top. E2 shows wide differences between sectors: Energy fell 37.3%, while Consumer Discretionary rose 32.1% and Information Technology rose 42.2%. Neither source covers travel and entertainment firms or earnings, and both measure stock performance only. So the evidence supports a mixed verdict: the general claim is overstated, not false.
Cite this claim
Warren Buffett, “Big businesses have generally done very well, with travel and entertainment mentioned in a way the quote leaves unclear, though they still have difficulties.” (said 15 December 2020). Verdict: mixed. Reliability API, claim c_0702d67c99b8, method 0.1.0+28da144b, dataset release v1.1.2. https://epistacklabs.com/claims/c_0702d67c99b8
This claim is in dataset release v1.1.2, with the same verdict.
Reply to this claim
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Verdicts are made automatically; how verdicts are made.