One question that has plagued the stock market over the past few months is whether we might be in an AI-fueled stock bubble — and when it might burst. As someone who has lived through multiple bubbles over the course of decades, I think billionaire investor Warren Buffett has a lot of wisdom to offer in this regard.

Don’t try to time the market

Buffett has sat on large piles of cash at certain points, leading some to believe he was trying to wait out a market pullback big enough to spend it. But he is smart enough to realize that no one can time the market with complete confidence – and he is not trying to do so.

Instead, his approach was to buy individual stocks when he thought their value was attractive, hold them for the long term, and then occasionally sell them.

This can appear to be market timing because it involves buying stocks at seemingly cheap prices. Often, the right moment to do this is after a stock market crash.

But buying trades when they appear isn’t the same as trying to time the market. Buffett didn’t pile into dot-com stocks and then hope to save big profits before the market peaked, for example.

Stick to what you know and understand

In fact, Buffett didn’t bother buying any dot-com stocks at all in the heady days of the early days. He also did not purchase leading AI stocks before stepping down as CEO of the company Berkshire Hathaway At the beginning of this year.

There’s a simple reason, even before we get into the evaluation. Buffett likes to stick to what he understands. He has long expressed his belief that he did not have the knowledge necessary to judge whether technology companies had the kind of business characteristics he was looking for.

Only years later did he invest in it IBM and apple.

Moat looks like Buffett

One tech engagement he and partner Charlie Munger thought about missing was… alphabet (Nasdaq: Google) (Nasdaq: Google).

The reason was that, in this case, they felt they had insights into Google and failed to act on them. Berkshire owned a company that was already spending a lot of cash buyouts on Google ads, so Buffett and Munger could bring the two together to see the broader potential of Google’s business.

Alphabet has many of the characteristics Buffett likes in a stock, and one of them is a “moat.” This is how Bhe describes the competitive advantage that keeps competitors at bay.

Google’s moat includes a huge volume of user data, its own technology, and a proven model for making money not just through search but through other features such as YouTube also.

Artificial intelligence poses a threat to Google’s dominance in search. This can lead to fewer searches and therefore less advertising revenue. But it could also represent an opportunity for Alphabet, given the vast amounts of structured information the company possesses that could help it leverage AI itself.

Alphabet has a huge customer base and has proven its ability to generate cash over time (although AI costs could reduce that).

But, like Buffett, I like to buy into great companies at attractive prices. Alphabet’s current stock price is too high for my taste, so I won’t invest in it.